Council approves major Southport tower, adds hundreds of new dwellings

Gold Coast City Council has signed off on a 42-storey mixed-use tower on Scarborough Street in Southport, granting development approval this week for a project that will deliver 318 apartments, ground-floor retail and a commercial office component across a 2,100-square-metre site. The approval lands as the city's CBD fringe continues to absorb investor and owner-occupier demand that has pushed the Queensland median house price to around $850,000 and left buyers hunting for stock closer to urban infrastructure.

Timing matters here. Southport sits within the declared Priority Development Area established under the Economic Development Act, a state-government designation that fast-tracks assessment for projects meeting specific planning benchmarks. That status has already drawn several projects to the suburb over the past three years, but this approval is among the tallest granted in the immediate CBD core. The development sits roughly 400 metres from the G:link light rail stop at Southport South, a proximity that satisfies Queensland's transport-oriented development guidelines and almost certainly helped smooth the path through council's planning committee.

The project is being developed by a Brisbane-based group with an existing footprint on the Gold Coast, having previously delivered a mid-rise residential block on Nerang Street. Construction is flagged to begin in the March quarter of 2027, with completion targeted for late 2029. The tower will replace a surface car park and a two-storey commercial building, neither of which carry heritage listing, so demolition is unlikely to trigger the kind of community debate that has surrounded other recent proposals — most notably the contested conversion of Shafston House in Kangaroo Point, across the border in Brisbane, which generated months of public submissions before approval was granted.

What the approval means for Southport's changing streetscape

Southport has spent the better part of a decade trying to shake a reputation as the Gold Coast's neglected centre while Broadbeach and Burleigh Heads captured the lifestyle headlines and the premium price growth. The numbers are starting to reflect a shift. Median unit prices in Southport sat at approximately $620,000 in the June 2026 quarter, according to data compiled by realestate.com.au — up from $490,000 two years earlier. That $130,000 jump in 24 months has changed the calculus for developers who previously defaulted to beachside sites.

The Scarborough Street site is within walking distance of the Southport Sharks venue on Musgrave Avenue, the Gold Coast Private Hospital and the Australia Fair shopping centre, giving the precinct a genuine live-work-service mix that pure resort suburbs struggle to replicate. The retail tenancy component — roughly 800 square metres across two ground-floor lots — is expected to be pitched at food-and-beverage operators, according to planning documents lodged with council, reinforcing a pedestrian activation strategy the City of Gold Coast has been pushing through its Southport Priority Centre framework since 2021.

Stamp duty and the cost of getting in

Buyers considering the project's off-the-plan release should model their costs carefully. Queensland's stamp duty scale means a $750,000 apartment purchase currently attracts transfer duty of around $27,090 — and that figure climbs sharply above the $1 million mark, where duty can exceed $38,000. Across southeast Queensland more broadly, transfer duty bills have ballooned in line with price growth, catching buyers who last purchased in a different market cycle off guard. For owner-occupiers buying off the plan, a Queensland Government concession scheme can reduce or defer part of that liability, but eligibility criteria apply and buyers should confirm their circumstances with a conveyancer before exchanging contracts.

For investors already holding Gold Coast property and watching the downsizer trend closely, the Southport approval adds to a supply pipeline that analysts at the Urban Development Institute of Australia Queensland have flagged as still insufficient to meet projected population demand through to 2031. The practical implication: expressions of interest for the project's first release are expected to open before the end of the September quarter, and buyers who registered early on previous Southport launches have generally found themselves ahead of late arrivals in securing preferred floor levels. Getting on the developer's mailing list now, before the marketing campaign launches, remains the most straightforward way to stay ahead of the queue.