Mirvac looking to build residential communities for mining towns in regional Queensland and WA

Property developer Mirvac has begun talk with coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG) producers about building houses for workers in northern Queensland, its managing director Nick Collishaw has said.

Collishaw says current talks about providing homes for workers building the new mining projects will be followed by discussions in about three to five years' time about longer-term, master-planned communities.

This follows Mirvac being named as the preferred developer of the Karratha city centre in the iron-ore rich Pilbara region in a joint venture project with the local land authority in a deal worth $1.5 billion.

The project will create the new suburb of Mulataga, providing accommodation for 8,000 people, Bloomberg reports.

“What’s been happening in the Pilbara and north of Queensland so far has been one off, ad hoc projects. The debate going on right now in the resource centres and councils is this is no longer boom-bust style development,” Collishaw says.

"We’re now putting together the infrastructure, the cultural facilities, you expect to see in the suburb of a city.”

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