Robina and Coomera Residents Push Back on Development Pace — And Officials Are Starting to Listen

Community leaders across the Gold Coast are warning that infrastructure is falling behind a construction boom that shows no sign of slowing, with officials from the City of Gold Coast and state government agencies now publicly acknowledging the gap between development approvals and liveable neighbourhood outcomes.

The pressure is most acute in Coomera and Robina — both locked in as 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games venue precincts — where rezoning decisions made over the past 18 months have outpaced road upgrades, school capacity and open-green-space provisions. The Olympics deadline of July 2032 is forcing a pace that local councillors say the existing planning framework wasn't built to handle.

What Officials and Experts Are Saying on the Ground

Gold Coast City Council's planning committee heard submissions in late June from Coomera Connect, a resident advocacy group formed in 2024, arguing that the Coomera Town Centre precinct has added more than 4,200 dwellings in three years without a single new public park being gazetted within walking distance. Council officers, in a written response tabled at the June 24 meeting, acknowledged "service provision lags" but stopped short of recommending a development pause, instead flagging a mid-year review of the Northern Corridor Growth Management Strategy.

Urban planner and former Gold Coast councillor Miriam Hartley — now a principal at Southport-based consultancy Coastal Urban Solutions — has been blunt in her public commentary. At a Robina community forum held on June 18 at the Robina Community Centre on Robina Town Centre Drive, she told attendees that the city's development contribution framework hasn't been substantively updated since 2019 and is collecting levies that don't reflect actual infrastructure costs in a high-inflation environment. Estimates circulating among planners put the per-dwelling shortfall at between $8,000 and $12,000 when benchmarked against current civil construction rates.

Short-term rental pressures are feeding the tension. Gold Coast recorded approximately 9,800 active Airbnb-style listings as of May 2026, according to data published by the Queensland Department of Housing. Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach together account for roughly 38 per cent of those listings. Resident groups in Mermaid Beach and Miami have been lobbying the state government since March to adopt the 60-nights-per-year cap that Noosa Shire has operated under since 2023, but Queensland Housing Minister's office has so far committed only to a "staged review" with no timetable attached.

Pressure Points From Broadbeach to Pimpama

Further north, Pimpama — which absorbed more than 3,100 new residents in 2025 alone according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics regional population release — has become a reference point for everything going wrong and right simultaneously. The Pimpama Sports Hub on Yawalpah Road opened in March and has been cited by Council CEO Tim Baker as evidence that community infrastructure can keep pace. Critics note the hub was originally funded under a 2019 federal grant and was five years in delivery.

The Gold Coast 2032 Venue Coordination Office, operating out of a Bundall shopfront since January, has been meeting quarterly with Robina residents adjacent to the Robina Stadium precinct. Those meetings have produced written commitments on construction traffic management along Robina Parkway, but residents say noise mitigation for the 2031 test-event program hasn't been addressed in any binding document.

State government urban economist Dr. Sandra Voss, speaking at a Property Council Queensland luncheon in Southport on July 1, pointed to a structural mismatch: Gold Coast's population is projected to reach 900,000 by 2036, but the current state infrastructure plan was modelled on 820,000. That 80,000-person gap, she argued, is the single biggest planning blind spot the city faces heading into its Olympic decade.

For residents navigating approvals, rezoning objections or rental regulation questions, the City of Gold Coast's Development and Assessment team holds public drop-in sessions at the Evandale Place civic centre in Bundall on the first Tuesday of each month. The next session is July 7. The state's Housing Legislation Amendment Bill, which includes short-term rental provisions, is due for its second reading in parliament before the September recess.