Cbus Property’s plans for a globally significant premium apartment building at 443 Queen Street have passed their final approval hurdle and marketing of the project.
The Planning and Environment Court today dismissed an appeal against Brisbane City Council’s approval of the project, clearing the way for the creation of Brisbane’s first truly subtropical apartment tower.
Effectively a tower on stilts, the new building will celebrate its location with a large void created at ground level to create new views to the heritage listed Customs House next door and from Queen Street through the site to the Brisbane River and Story Bridge.
It will transform the Customs House precinct by creating a new pedestrian link between Queen Street and the Brisbane River and by linking Customs House to the nearby park.
Cbus Property, the property investment arm of industry superannuation fund Cbus, is presently developing the 1 William Street office tower and regards this new project as one of its flagship residential projects in Australia.
CEO Adrian Pozzo welcomed the court decision and said he was looking forward to getting on with construction.
“443 Queen Street will set a new benchmark for apartment living. The design celebrates the Queensland climate, with natural light and ventilation throughout and gardens on every level, and we’re excited to be finally underway,” Mr Pozzo said.
“A development of this nature has never been done in Brisbane before and 443 Queen Street will become iconic and synonymous with Brisbane’s relationship to the river.”
The tower has been designed by Brisbane firm Architectus, led by Elizabeth Watson Brown, and the internationally renowned and award winning Australian architect Richard Hassell, of Singapore-based WOHA Architects.
Ms Watson Brown said she expected 443 Queen Street to be a transformative building for Brisbane.
“I believe it will be a beautiful place to live but it will also influence future development here and help shape the maturing global identity of Brisbane as a unique subtropical city.”
The building will include 264 premium apartments all enjoying spectacular views of the Brisbane River.
As a result of final approval, selling agent CBRE will immediately resume taking expressions of interest and install a sales suite on site in preparation for a project launch later this year.
CBRE’s Managing Director of Residential Projects Paul Barratt said buyer interest in the apartments has exceeded any project released in Brisbane in the last ten years, due to the quality of the project and its CBD riverfront site.
Buyers can register their interest at the website 443queenst.com.
The government should be buying up these river edge sites to return to them to the people – not to be continually privatised and owned by the well off. We have KMs of river edge… yet how much is truly accessible?
Currently the river edge is accessible, uninterrupted from New Farm all the way to Toowong, on both sides. And there are large open spaces like the botanic gardens, Kangaroo Point & Southbank. Undeniably it would be nice of ‘the government’ to buy huge chunks of high-cost land for inner city dwellers like myself to enjoy as parks, but I wonder if the wider population would really enjoy having their rates/taxes/govt debt raised to fund this?
A path cantilevered or boardwalk over the river is not meaningful public space – it treats the river as a conduit and not a destination area (we are a river city afterall).
Just look at the quality of river edge space between botanic gardens to Toowong & there are large chunks on both sides that do not have public access or even worse is private public space. To continually point at botanic gardens, kangaroo point and southbank to say: “Hey look, over there is a bit of open space so we don’t have to provide any new space” is not good planning. It ignores that spaces have a capacity, can be loved to death & just kicks the can down the road of supplying new public urban space to keep pace with inner city population growth.
The gov HAS to buy large (or small) high cost land because that is the only option left because poor planning has forced us down this route.
Nice structure, @cyal8m8 Rivers edge is a public thoroughfare for cycling and walking.
3m wide path cantilevered over the river is not an appropriate amount of public space. To treat the rivers edge as a thoroughfare and not a destination space is a poor outcome. Brisbane is a river city and if we do not have a large range of publicly owned spaces on the rivers edge then we might as well not have it.
I’m not against the structure. In fact Brisbane should have been looking at Singapore years ago and a lot of Australia’s design talent is there working on cool projects. However, as a river edge development that breaches the neighborhood plan, too close to a core heritage building, requires a 150 yr old fig to be trimmed back (figs hate change…) and used dubious design rationale to justify… it’s hard not to be jaded against the current planning process that allows something like this. What’s the point of having a heritage council if you are going to ignore their advice?
Looks fantastic, when does it start 🙂
@cyal8m8 here is an idea instead of spending your time arguing about land that “you” want accessible, work hard save money buy land and do with it what you see fit.