The City of Brisbane retained KMA to assist the City in evaluating the proposal submitted by Universal Paragon Corporation (UPC) to redevelop the 700-acre Baylands site with a mixed use 12.2 million square foot project comprised of 4,400 homes, 6 million square feet of office space, 800,000 square feet of retail and 170 acres of open space.
The redevelopment of the site will require approximately $1.1 billion of investment to remediate environmental contamination and provide necessary back-bone infrastructure improvements, which represents a huge economic challenge to the project. In addition to economic challenges, there is significant community opposition to redeveloping the property due to concerns about the environmental contamination and the proposed number of residential units.
Keyser Marston’s role has been comprised of two components: 1) evaluating financial feasibility; and 2) evaluating fiscal impacts to the City of Brisbane. The financial feasibility analysis included evaluating infrastructure costs, land values supported by various land uses, examining phasing alternatives to limit the amount of upfront capital to develop a viable phase 1 project; and meeting with the applicant to discuss options for proceeding with the project. The fiscal impact analysis entailed examining: 1) market conditions; 2) home prices and apartment rental rates; 2) development costs; 3) testing the impacts of a range of alternative land use mixes, and 3) identifying alternative financing mechanisms for funding infrastructure improvements and providing municipal services so that the project would generate a fiscal surplus to the City.
KMA attended numerous public hearings to present the findings of our analyses and offer options for enhancing the impacts of the project on the City.
