As the first district hub for the Aura regional city centre, Baringa Stockland needed to provide a key place for the community to access convenience retail, medical services and entertainment. Our design team have worked collaboratively with Stockland to establish a retail character for the region, with the centre acting as a catalyst for future retail precincts as the master planned community develops over the next 20 years.

The two-storey centre incorporates 4,000sqm of retail and commercial area, anchored by a full line IGA supermarket, Stockland’s Sunshine Coast workplace, retail specialties tenancies, carparking and external landscape areas. Stage 2 of the precinct also delivers a swim school and medical precinct to the established centre.

Baringa’s success is delivered through a considered response to the overall site master plan and urban framework. The design resolves many of the site and town planning constraints by turning the centre ‘inside out’. Retail and commercial aspects are addressed to the boundary of the site in a traditional high street form, with key activity nodes for dining and recreation positioned at clearly identifiable intersections across the 2.2-hectare site that lead into the established town square.

At its core, the design responds to the Aura’s urban framework for ‘liveability’ and ‘community’, establishing a social and lifestyle asset for Caloundra. The site planning creates a decentralised hub, with activation across the site, expanding the town square and connecting the retail precinct to other complementary functions within its immediate vicinity, including the primary school, community centre, childcare centre, commercial development, medical precinct, and tavern.

As a 5-star Green Star development, Stockland Baringa achieves an exciting sustainability credential for a regional centre, using passive design in the developments’ massing and orientation, high performance façade systems, a large-scale solar array across the site, automatic sun control systems, significant grey water storage and irrigation system, as well as a focus on sustainable products with extended lifecycles. The urban planning strategy has also been futureproofed; the centralised carpark is designed to densify with future retail and commercial usage as public transport networks develop across the new regional centre.