Developers say huge Murray Bridge project won’t repeat Mt Barker mistakes
A $7.5 billion plan to open up a huge land parcel at Murray Bridge for 17,000 new homes will be better coordinated than the controversial rezoning of Mount Barker, say developers and the local council.
Victorian developers Costa Property Group and Grange Development on Wednesday afternoon revealed plans to deliver 17,100 new homes, seven schools, a new town centre and six “neighbourhood activity centres” in Gifford Hill, located about an hour from the Adelaide CBD.
The proponents say the development, to be staged over 40 years and worth $7.5 billion, will be spread across 1860 hectares of rural land immediately southwest of Murray Bridge. Around 360 hectares is already zoned for residential purposes.
The developers and Murray Bridge Council have touted the plan as “the largest single development in the state’s history” and forecast more than 44,000 people will live in the new precinct when complete.
“This is not Monarto 2.0,” Murray Bridge mayor Wayne Thorley said, referencing former Labor Premier Don Dunstan’s failed 1970s vision for a satellite city with 200,000 residents outside Murray Bridge.
The first homes are scheduled to start construction in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The scale of the Gifford Hill proposal is enormous. The development area is larger than Walker Corporation’s 1340-hectare Riverlea housing estate, which is projected to deliver 12,000 new homes in the far northwestern suburbs.
It is also much larger than the controversial Mount Barker rezoning.
Mount Barker is just a 30-minute drive up the South Eastern Freeway from Murray Bridge and has become a case study in poor infrastructure coordination with new housing.
In 2010, former Rann Government Minister Paul Holloway made 1300 hectares of rural Mount Barker land available for housing. Only a year later, Holloway’s successor, John Rau, expressed dismay about the lack of infrastructure planning for the area.
Mount Barker District Council has since been warning the Malinauskas Government that it is “imperative” the mistakes of the Mount Barker rezoning are not repeated. The council has expressed frustration about incomplete road projects, pressure on local transport infrastructure and unmet infrastructure spending promises.
But Murray Bridge Council and the Gifford Hill developers say they are confident those problems will not occur in their plans.
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For one, they argue a lot more planning work has been done in Murray Bridge than Mount Barker.
“Mount Barker was, to be fair to the council up there, rushed through on them,” Mayor Thorley told InDaily.
“The land acquisitions was done and the zoning was done really quick without any clear thought to what comes next.
“With us, we’ve had a long time to be clear in our mind what we needed to do.”
Thorley said the development consortium understands that “they will have to pay for things as things develop”.
“This will be staged, the infrastructure costs will be picked up as the show goes, not one of leaving it to after the event,” he said, later adding that they were currently working out the cost breakdown between local government, state government and the developers.
“It’s been made clear to us in the past that trunk infrastructure is the responsibility of the state government.”
The developers and council also say that Murray Bridge is a different proposition now to Mount Barker in 2010, pointing to the council area’s existing population of more than 23,000 people supported by seven schools and a hospital.
“All those things are there ready to progress,” Thorley said.
“This is not like out in the boondocks, it’s right out adjoining a significant regional centre.”
The Gifford Hill development comes at a time when the Malinauskas Government has raised significant concerns about “underinvestment” in water and wastewater infrastructure across metropolitan Adelaide.
Premier Peter Malinauskas told a developers forum in June that thousands of planned homes in new greenfield developments were “at risk” without a $1.5 billion program to increase SA Water’s spending on new infrastructure.
But the Gifford Hill developers say they will not face the same water connection problems that are being felt acutely in Adelaide’s northern suburbs.
A $52 million wastewater treatment plant was completed near Murray Bridge four years ago, and Gifford Hill’s proximity to the River Murray lends easy access to mains potable water, the developers say.
“Mount Barker is geographically a lot more challenging,” said James Dibble, managing director of Grange Development.
“It’s a lot more undulating, it’s tighter and it’s a beautiful part of South Australia but it does cause friction points in terms of traffic engineering… and that’s obviously what’s somewhat playing out.”
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Dibble argues that Gifford Hill will have fewer infrastructure problems because it will be better coordinated between landowners.
He said the development venture has spoken to all the landowners in the precinct and they are on board with their plan to stage the development.
“When you have a growth area that has lots of developers, lots of developer interests, then you end up with multiple development fronts,” Dibble said.
“That does cause some complication in terms of a proper and orderly roll out, and therefore the flow on effects to infrastructure because those developers need temporary pump stations to service their own developments, they’ve got to get access agreements through land that might not be having development intended in the short term.
“All those complications mean that you have more disruption to the road network, you have more disruption to the SA Water network.
“That is very different in the Gifford Hill context: the topography is a lot easier, it’s got obviously the Freeway, it’s got mains potable water [and] trunk infrastructure in its north.”
Murray Bridge Council also anticipates more traffic along the South Eastern Freeway as the development progresses.
Murray Bridge Council CEO Heather Barclay said the state government’s Department for Infrastructure and Transport is “absolutely across our structure planning” as well as “the scope and scale of a fully developed Murray Bridge”.
“They have taken that into consideration with their transport planning,” she said.
Only 23.3 per cent of Murray Bridge residents commute outside of the local council area for work, according to a recent council study.
That’s much lower than Mount Barker, where around 60 per cent of residents make the daily trip down the South Eastern Freeway. Murray Bridge also has several major local employers, including Thomas Foods, SunPork Farms and Costa Mushrooms.
Asked whether the new Gifford Hill development would necessitate a rail link to Murray Bridge, Mayor Thorley said: “I don’t think anyone’s going to build a new railway line anywhere.”
“The cost of that is enormous. The only way something would happen like this is if an outside party did it,” he said.
“I think the current rail system is the one that’s there and that will be the only one for some time to come, but obviously public transport and use of the South Eastern Freeway will probably expand.”
Urban Development Institute of Australia SA division CEO Liam Golding said he expected demand for houses in Murray Bridge to be similar to Mount Barker’s.
“Murray Bridge’s approach to the growth area is it’s understood a lot of what’s worked well at Mount Barker, while avoiding the few little issues that have been issues for the quick delivery of homes at Mount Barker,” he said.
Planning Minister Nick Champion said Murray Bridge has “enormous potential”.
He also confirmed that houses in the Gifford Hill development will be subject to the state government’s new $10,000 water augmentation charge to help fund water infrastructure.
“As the project develops, the Government will continue to work with the local council and project partners to unlock this housing opportunity by assisting with land rezoning and infrastructure planning,” Champion said in a statement.
