Mixed-Use Tower Wins Council Tick Near Townsville CBDUpdated

Townsville City Council has approved a 12-storey mixed-use development at 142 Flinders Street East, greenlighting a $47 million project that will deliver 84 residential apartments, ground-floor retail and co-working space within 600 metres of the CBD core. The decision, handed down at Tuesday's ordinary council meeting, ends a 14-month assessment process and marks the largest single development approval in the inner city since the Strand Hotel redevelopment in 2022.

The timing matters. Queensland's property market is running hot enough that stamp duty bills on some Brisbane suburb purchases have blown out by as much as $180,000 over recent years, pricing buyers out of the south-east and pushing investor attention north. Townsville, with a median house price sitting around $390,000 and rental yields regularly clearing 6 per cent, has been collecting that overflow. A CBD-adjacent apartment tower directly targets the demographic that wants the yield without the land-tax complexity of a freestanding house.

What's going in, and where exactly

The approved plans show the development sitting on a 1,200-square-metre site between the previously derelict Tattersalls Hotel carpark and the Palmer Street dining precinct. The ground floor will include roughly 400 square metres of activated retail tenancy, with the developer, Cairns-based Coral Coast Property Group, nominating a café operator and a health-and-wellness provider as preferred tenants. Levels two through four are designated for commercial co-working, and floors five to twelve house the residential component. Of the 84 apartments, 61 are one- and two-bedroom configurations; the remaining 23 are three-bedroom units with city or ocean aspect.

The site is a short walk from Riverway's north-side counterpart, the CBD Strand foreshore upgrades completed in late 2024, and sits within the Townsville City Deal corridor, the federal-state-local funding arrangement that has already bankrolled the Haughton Pipeline Stage 2 and the Townsville Stadium precinct works on Stanton Terrace. That proximity is commercially deliberate. Coral Coast's development application cited the City Deal infrastructure investment specifically as the demand driver underpinning their feasibility modelling.

Numbers that make the project stack up

The vacancy rate for inner-Townsville apartments sat at 1.2 per cent as of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's March 2026 quarterly report, effectively zero from a landlord's perspective. Average weekly rent for a two-bedroom apartment within 2 kilometres of the CBD has moved from $380 in early 2024 to $440 now, a 16 per cent lift in roughly 24 months. That rental trajectory is precisely what has drawn interstate investors who have been squeezed out of Geelong and outer Brisbane, where stamp duty alone on comparable property can now exceed $30,000.

Construction costs remain the project's wildcard. North Queensland builders have flagged labour shortages as a live constraint, with Townsville-based contractor McNab flagging in its May 2026 industry brief that residential high-rise trades are booked solid until mid-2027. Coral Coast's approval comes with a 12-month construction commencement condition, meaning they must break ground before July 2027 or return to council.

For buyers and investors watching this space, the practical read is straightforward: off-the-plan registration for the Flinders Street East project opens in August, with indicative pricing starting at $425,000 for a one-bedroom unit and $695,000 for a three-bedroom corner configuration. Those prices sit at a premium to the broader Townsville median but are underpinned by the rental numbers. Anyone considering the project should factor in Queensland's current stamp duty scales, a $695,000 purchase currently attracts approximately $24,525 in transfer duty under the standard owner-occupier rate, or higher under the investor calculation. Engaging a Queensland-registered conveyancer before signing anything off-the-plan remains essential, particularly given the 18-to-24-month settlement timeline Coral Coast has flagged for this build.