TWO national players have won two major Western Australian property projects worth a combined $2.5 billion, with Mirvac snaring a Karratha development and Lend Lease picked for the Waterbank site in East Perth.
State cabinet backed Mirvac to develop 1.5 hectares of land in Karratha’s city centre and the new 160ha Mulataga coastal residential estate, which is expected to have 1,500 dwellings.
Total private and state investment in the project, which has been run by Landcorp, is estimated to be $1.5 billion.
The Karratha announcement comes two years after the state government launched the Pilbara Cities policy to expand and rejuvenate the major population centres of the state’s north-west.
On Tuesday, Planning Minister John Day announced that Lend Lease was to lead the $1 billion development of a 4ha site adjacent to the Causeway (see story below), which is part of the East Perth Redevelopment Authority’s 40ha Riverside precinct, which extends from Gloucester Park around to the Queens development running up the north side of Adelaide Terrace.
Singapore property group Frasers’ Queens Riverside is the first stage of that EPRA project. Frasers has stated that 104 of the 265 Qlll apartments had sold for a cumulative value of $74.6 million. The biggest sale as at this stage was almost $1.38 million to buyers who intended to be owner-occupiers.
Premier Colin Barnett said the state government would be contributing $130 million from Royalties for Regions towards the development of new roads, infrastructure upgrades, public amenities and additional service worker accommodation in the Karratha city centre to help develop it into a city of 50,000 people.
Lend Lease and Australand were the two under-bidders shortlisted for the Karratha development.
Mirvac’s win comes on the back of announcing the go ahead of another state government development in the north-west with a revised plan to expand its Port Hedland hotel proposal after the project was delayed because of dust and zoning issues.
In August, Mirvac announced it planned to build a $125 million hotel and residential development in Port Hedland, to become the cornerstone of the Spoilbank Marina precinct.
The 178-room, $50 million hotel will cover 1.58 hectares of vacant land adjacent to the old Port Hedland Hospital on oceanfront land on Sutherland Street. Mirvac also plans to construct 116 new residential dwellings in addition to the hotel development, at a cost of $75 million.
A hotel development at the site was first flagged in November 2007 by the Labor state government, after then-planning and infrastructure minister Alannah MacTiernan announced Mirvac as the project’s preferred proponent.
