Springfield Rise; or Springfield Lakes as most of us refer to this great community
For more than 60 years, Lendlease has been at he cutting edge in creating large master planned communities across Australia. Their holistic approach has continued to focus on lifestyle and community led outcomes, providing a strong sense of belonging for their residents within the places they have created. For those that have been around the industry long enough, the brand Delfin (prior to Lendlease) was not only synonymous with ducks and golden retriever dogs in their advertising, but they were generally regarded as the pioneers of development attributes that are now considered standard. A significant proportion of our broad hectare communities owe some of their success to the path paved by this leading business.
The following narrative applies to Springfield Rise as part of the Greater Springfield project.
1. When was the site acquired?
Lendlease has had a long-standing involvement in the development of the adjoining Springfield Lakes project, dating back to 1999 when Lendlease entered into a development agreement with Springfield Land Corporation (now Springfield City Group) who is the Master Developer of the Greater Springfield Masterplan Area. Lendlease moved into the Springfield Rise project delivery in 2016.
2. How long did it take to get approval and what were the challenges?
While there were many years of lead-in work getting to the point the project team was ready to lodge the Spring Mountain Precinct Plan, it was a relatively quick approval given the scale and complexity of the development, taking approximately six months for Ipswich City Council to assess and approve the project in December 2015. Helping this timeline was the various pre-lodgement meetings held with Council and the submission of a Draft Precinct Plan for review. As well as the high-level Precinct Plan approval, each village is then subject to its own subsequent Area Development Plan, which each take an additional circa six months on average to be approved.
The key challenges during the Precinct Plan approval are typically the regular ones for large scale masterplan communities, including negotiation on Open Space outcomes (quantity, size, location of parks); Non-residential outcomes (quantity, size and location of local/neighbourhood centres, and community centres); Interface treatments (to adjoining conservation, and town centre land); and the timing of delivery of key infrastructure (parks, trunk infrastructure etc). Beyond these, EPBC approvals, bushfire appropriate design and planning, design for building on slope are some of the other complex matters the project team has had to work through.
3. When was the first sod turned?
The first sod at Springfield Rise was turned in November 2016, with Shadforth Civil commencing construction to deliver the first approx. 500 lots within the first 12 months. They have remained the principal contractor at our Springfield Rise project since.
4. How big will the project be?
Springfield Rise is a 460-hectare site which will deliver around 4,000 homes and house; more than 12,000 residents by 2026. To date, more than 1,600 lots have already sold. As well as the homes, the project will deliver more than 100ha of open space incorporating 13 neighbourhood parks, two district parks and a major citywide sports field precinct, natural reserves and kilometres of walking, hiking and cycling paths connecting to Springfield town centre.
5. What makes Springfield Rise special/unique?
Springfield Rise is in the heart of Greater Springfield between the city-like amenity of Springfield Central and the natural beauty of White Rock-Spring Mountain Conservation Estate. Connected to the award-winning Springfield Lakes, also delivered by Lendlease, residents enjoy access to a wide variety of amenity. The vision for Springfield Rise is to create a ‘five minute’ community where residents have everything they need within reach - living close to shops, schools, recreational facilities and cafes.
Springfield Rise is well positioned in terms of amenity; close to the Springfield Town Centre which includes the Orion shopping complex, Springfield train station, hospital, university and sports fields. The project enjoys undulating topography allowing long views and vistas from almost every location, to the surrounding White Rock Conservation Estate. It is designed as a series of well-defined villages linked by strong bike and pedestrian paths. These villages are surrounded by clearly defined open spaces, it is well serviced by parks and has a strong network of linear open space connecting the schools, formal open space areas with the wider Springfield amenities. This also provides opportunity to access the existing walking trails within the White Rock Conservation Estate.
As a compliment to the nearby Town Centre, a Neighbourhood Centre (including childcare and likely a swim school) is currently under development. This will provide Springfield Rise with its own retail amenity for its immediate community and residents.
The Springfield Rise development provides a range of lot typologies to cater for a range of family and lifestyle stages. Its appeal is evident in Greater Ipswich, with the residential population being consistently one of, or the fastest growing suburbs in the area. It is home to Queensland’s largest display village – featuring 47 home designs by 21 leading national, state and local builders.
6. What is the cheapest apartment/townhouse/block of land/house that has been sold and when?
At Springfield Rise, Lendlease provide a range of land options that cater to a wide spectrum of home buyers and budgets. Much of the land product at Springfield Rise is priced well below $300,000 – with the average block of land around $250,000. Our popular 400m Premium Villa product is circa $280,000.
Over the past financial year, Terrace blocks where technically the cheapest at $139,000, but these require attached dwellings to be constructed on them. In terms of a standalone block, it was one of the town villa product (240m2) at $148,000, which caters to the buyers who don’t need a big home.
As the Springfield Rise market continues to grow, and the amenity progression continues within the project and the Greater Springfield area, the market continues to slowly shift to a desire for larger land products. The most common products tend to be the Premium Villa and Courtyard product in the range of 400m2 to 450m2, which provide the ability for a large family home without the price tag of the traditional 600m2+ product.
Lendlease incorporate Town product (shallower depth 24m lots to the standard 32m deep product) which also provides more affordable land options. They are well accepted by certain customer segments who can build a decent house on the wide frontage accommodating a double garage, but without having to pay for the big backyard.
The developer continues to make adjustments to their land product mix as they get ongoing feedback from builders and monitor buyer preferences. For example, this can be something simple like changing the future design mix to dial down the amount of traditional 18m frontage lots they produce, in preference for more traditional 20m frontage and 16m frontage options. Buyer preferences have highlighted to staff the interest in going for 20m wide frontages if they want a large lot, rather than the slightly smaller frontage 18m lots, or sticking simply to a 16m frontage lot. The reason being is the 18m lots can only generally achieve the same built housing product as 16m frontage lot with a build to boundary, so purchasers get the same amount of house without paying for the extra bit of land.
The project is currently developing in elevated locations with the project, that provide panoramic views and vistas back to Brisbane CBD.
7. What is the most expensive apartment/townhouse/block of land/house sold and when?
Lendlease’s Springfield Rise at Spring Mountain record sits with two Metricon display homes selling in 2019, one priced at over $1million and the other just under.
8. How has this project been influenced by the community?
Having had more than 15 years’ experience delivering the Springfield Lakes project, one of the key learnings from developing on similarly sloping land, the project was determined to provide the future Springfield Rise community with the most customer friendly outcome in terms of delivering efficient, well-engineered lots which were predominantly flat, buildable, and with aesthetic retaining walls along the boundaries as required. With Spring Mountain being able to take advantage of the natural rolling hills, views, creeks and bushland, its development requires the manipulation of the natural terrain with bulk earthworks operations to provide allotments that can be easily used and built upon.
The design of the site applied to the natural terrain has significant and long-standing impacts to the visual appeal, amenity and usefulness of the product that will ultimately be sold to and lived in by the future residents of Springfield Rise. Lots with unusually high and domineering retaining walls are not aesthetically pleasing, with decreased airflow and restricted views, and this was clearly not the outcome envisioned for Springfield Rise. Lendlease customers identified their preference for flat lots in terms of overall affordability and lifestyle, which has resonated in the valuations and global market preference. On the other hand, a sloping lot requires creation of a flat pad by the homeowner, resulting in increased construction costs passed on to buyers to undertake earthworks and construct retaining walls. This ultimately reduces the sale price and increases the time spent on the market. By having the onus of creating flat lots placed on the homeowner, often lower quality retaining walls are constructed with reduced life expectancy, stability issues and are not visually appealing.
Example retained product
To this end, the project has moved forward with Lendlease as the developer mitigating the risk of this occurring on the Springfield Rise development, by ensuring that pad levels are nominated as part of the bulk earthworks operations. We have delivered slope responsive product in the form of split lots, which with good built product outcomes provided by numerous house builders, the outcome has both visual street appeal and delivers a very functional family home.
Example Split lot
As well as this overarching learning, the development, community and designs team undertake regular consultation with the community and key stakeholders in order to gain a better understanding of the needs of groups within Springfield Rise, seeking to identify how they can be incorporated into future designs, especially parks and public open spaces. In the modern world, feedback from the community can be instant via Facebook and other social media.
9. How has this project influenced community?
There are several things Lendlease do or have delivered which they trust provides a positive legacy for their Springfield Rise community. Completed in 2019 was the Springfield Central Sports fields – delivering a much needed $56.2 million complex to the community and surrounding region. It is a 22.5ha precinct at Springfield Central which has 16 netball courts, eight tennis courts, four multipurpose sporting fields, three club houses with canteen amenity, two playgrounds and carparking. Engaging with sports groups to activate the ovals from day one to whom the facilities have become home to various local sporting groups. The staff of Lendlease continue to help promote their local events where they can.
The team provide a free bookable community space in their Display Village Green for local fitness groups and school holiday active programs to facilitate classes available to residents and the surrounding community. Regular Meet Your Neighbour events hosted by the project provide an opportunity for new residents to meet each other in an open and casual format.
Since its inception in 2016, the Springfield Rise Community Grants Program, which is administered by Bendigo Bank’s Community Enterprise Foundation, has provided funding of close to $79,000 across 19 different local initiatives. Projects that have been funded include native beehives for local schools and kindergartens, wildlife nest boxes, mentorship programs for youth, school diversity initiatives and wool supplies for a craft club who knit for disadvantaged groups, just to name a few.
We encourage resident leadership and participation at various community events – set up/pack down, welcoming guests, facilitating connection activities, serving food – leading to community champions who volunteer for events and will carry on this positive sense of community once the project development is complete.
10. Has your project won any awards?
Springfield Rise is part of the multi-award-winning Greater Springfield Development.