Located directly off the Bruce Highway in Caboolture, Morlink Tradepark provides much needed industrial free-hold land within Moreton Bay. Stage 1 will deliver 22 fully serviced industrial allotments within this fast-growing industrial corridor.
Beginning at project feasibility, RMA assisted the Client with developing the lot layout plan to suit the engineering constraints of the existing site. Affected by existing overland flows, fish passages, flooding, significant falls across the properties and an interface with a State-Controlled Road, decisions were able to be made quickly to deal with the significant upstream flows at an early stage of the project.
Currently zoned as rural residential, the existing properties were not serviced for sewer nor were they within the future connections area for Unitywater. Being identified early made it possible for early involvement with Unitywater to begin the process of negotiating to construct a new sewer pump station and rising main, whilst proactively being able to re-arrange the lot layout plan to mitigate the loss of any saleable area with the inclusion of the pump.
Managing these risks early in the design phase minimised the risk to the project program and allowed open conversations with Council and Unitywater on the constraints present across the site.
A key risk for the development was that the lawful point of discharge for the developed site was a mapped fish passage, and a waterway barrier works location which needed to be coordinated with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF).
Determining the stormwater outcome for the site, we prepared extensive flood modelling and a unique in-line detention system to achieve the requirements with the Accepted Development Outcomes for DAF. This actually reduced the impacts to neighbouring properties and Hickey Rd.
To create freeboard to the flood managed flows, we naturally stepped the proposed industrial allotments – keeping the levels as close to natural as possible. Given the large-scale industrial sites are flat, we were proud in how we could mitigate the total retaining required for the site given the undulating nature of the existing properties.
The final product delivered an efficient solution which integrated with the required stormwater infrastructure to meet Council requirements. We were able to successfully negotiate with Council that our Client would treat flows from the roadworks and any smaller allotments only. This reduced the scale of infrastructure that needed to be constructed and ultimately handed over to Council, which benefited both our Client and Council.