Mirvac Gold Coast project: Gainsborough Greens

Mirvac (MGR) has launched a $1 billion residential project on the Gold Coast which will be the Group's largest residential project in Queensland. Gainsborough Greens is a 490-hectare master-planned residential community on the Gold Coast is one of seven projects due to start this year.

The property giant has designed seven precincts with its high-end products to be built around the existing golf course, using a body corporate structure. Mirvac also is offering low- and medium-density housing without body corporate fees, catering for the middle market with prices starting from about $500,000.

Mirvac's Gainsborough project will include development of 2300 homes at Pimpama just north of Dreamworld over the next 10 years. QLD Premier Anna Bligh says the decade-long timeframe will allow the provision of infrastructure to keep pace with the population expansion in the state's growing southeast corner. "What you'll see here is not just a housing development, you'll see a whole new community, a community that will have parklands, recreation space, and neighbourhoods for people and families," said Bligh. "This is a good example of what we can achieve in southeast Queensland, and get population management right."

The 20-year-old Gainsborough Greens golf course will be upgraded in the next four years with a new clubhouse, community facilities and a driving range. Open space makes up 65 per cent, or 318 hectares, of the overall development, and Mirvac GRoup plans to have the first homes on the market this year with prices starting at about $500,000 and ranging up to golf course frontage mansions worth more than $1 million. Mirvac also has laid plans for a major commercial-retail precinct west of the 490ha estate, near the proposed Pimpama railway station.