COUNCIL MOVES TO SPARK UP CBD

More land added to development incentives policy

A MAJOR council incentives scheme to encourage more residential applications in the Toowoomba CBD has been revamped and extended due to minimal uptake from developers. More than $2 million still sits in the

pot for the Temporary Toowoomba CBD Development Incentives policy, three years after it was launched by the council.

The councillors yesterday voted to expand the coverage of the scheme, which offered to reduce up to 100 per cent of infrastructure charges for unit, apartment and hotel proposals within the city centre.

Just one application, Kenneth Wagner’s massive redevelopment of the Gladstone Hotel, has successfully earned a reduction since 2015.

Cr Chris Tait said the council wanted to see more people living in Toowoomba City to activate the CBD more effectively.

THE Toowoomba Regional Council has revamped a major CBD incentives scheme to encourage more residential developments, after just one application was approved in more than three years.

The Temporary Toowoomba CBD Development Incentives policy was extended for yet another two years by the councillors yesterday, with $2 million left in the fund since it was launched in 2015.

More CBD land has been added to the policy map, including the western side of the Toowoomba Railway Parklands priority development area and the old Gasworks site on Chalk Dr.

The councillors’ vote yesterday comes just a few weeks after developer Kenneth Wagner had nearly $1 million knocked off the infrastructure charges bill for his 102-room hotel thanks to the policy.

The scheme was supposed to incentivise developments that grew the population within the Toowoomba CBD, through hotels, apartments or units.

But Mr Wagner’s Gladstone Hotel redevelopment has been the only successful application.

Planning and development chair Cr Chris Tait said the TRC wanted to see more people living in the suburb of Toowoomba City, but natural roadblocks existed.

“We have quite a limited number of people who live in the CBD. To get more activation of the CBD, you need people living there,” he said.

“What developers are saying to me is with the cost of land, buildings, infrastructure charges and what we can sell it for, by the time you put all their costs together, there’s not enough profit for them.

“We’re giving them a helping hand with infrastructure charges.”

Under the scheme, certain developments can be eligible for an 80 or 100 per cent infrastructure charges reduction, capped at $1 million.

Cr Nancy Sommerfield tried to reduce this to 50 per cent at the meeting, but the alternative motion was defeated.

Just 2088 people lived in Toowoomba City according to the 2016 Census, and this number declined from 2011.