A $47 million residential and commercial project has won Toowoomba Regional Council approval, adding pressure to an already tight inner-city rental market.
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Toowoomba Regional Council has approved a $47 million mixed-use development on Herries Street, less than 400 metres from the Grand Central Shopping Centre, in what planners are calling one of the most significant inner-city approvals granted in the city this decade. The seven-storey project will deliver 112 apartments alongside ground-floor retail tenancies, with construction expected to begin before the end of 2026.
The timing is not accidental. Toowoomba's vacancy rate for rental properties sat at just 0.8 per cent as of the June 2026 quarter, according to data compiled by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, a figure that has put serious strain on workers relocating to the region for projects tied to the $10 billion Inland Rail corridor. With the Toowoomba to Seqwater section of that program moving into active civil works, the city is absorbing a sustained wave of construction labour and associated services employment, and the existing housing stock is not keeping pace.
What the Development Includes
The approved plans show a mix of one, two and three-bedroom apartments across floors two through seven, with three ground-floor commercial spaces fronting Herries Street. The developer, a Brisbane-registered firm, has committed to 15 per cent of units being offered at below-market rates through a partnership arrangement with the Toowoomba-based housing provider Habitat for Humanity Darling Downs. Car parking for 98 vehicles will be accommodated in a two-level basement configuration. Council's planning committee cleared the application at its July 1 session after a revised traffic impact report addressed concerns raised by residents from the adjacent East Street precinct during the public notification period in April.
The site itself, currently occupied by a disused commercial building that most recently housed a telecommunications equipment firm, had been sitting vacant for nearly four years. Under Toowoomba Regional Council's 2022 Planning Scheme, the block is zoned High Density Residential, a designation that had been in place since 2019 but went untested at this scale until now. The approved height of seven storeys sits one floor below the maximum allowable under that zoning, which partly explains why the application attracted fewer objections than comparable projects in lower-density parts of the city.
What It Means for the Surrounding Area
The Herries Street corridor has seen scattered infill activity over the past three years, including the 24-unit Newtown Quarter development completed in late 2024 near the intersection with Neil Street. However, this new approval dwarfs anything that preceded it in this immediate pocket of the inner city. Property professionals tracking the Toowoomba market point to median house prices sitting around $490,000, still roughly $300,000 below Brisbane's median, as a key driver drawing both owner-occupiers and investors to the region. Apartment stock near the CBD remains comparatively thin, which has pushed rents for two-bedroom units in postcodes 4350 and 4352 to between $420 and $480 per week, a 22 per cent increase from the same period in 2023.
For buyers watching the development, settlement on off-the-plan purchases is not expected until late 2028 at the earliest. Council has attached 24 conditions to the approval, including a requirement for the developer to contribute $380,000 to the Toowoomba Regional Council Infrastructure Charges framework, funds directed toward road and drainage upgrades in the immediate catchment. Anyone considering an off-the-plan contract should obtain independent legal advice before signing, given the 24-month-plus construction timeline and the conditions attached to the approval that could still alter the final product. A formal sales campaign has not yet launched, but expressions of interest are expected to open through the developer's appointed agency within the next six to eight weeks.
