The Sandgate Bayside Chamber of Commerce has launched a community-driven campaign to shape the future of one of Brisbane’s most historically significant bayside suburbs, with the Activate! Sandgate! campaign positioning the local business community’s vision ahead of an upcoming planning consultation process.
Read: Brighton Foreshore Parklands Upgrade to Begin This Month
The campaign arrives at a defining moment. Sandgate, which sits about 16 kilometres north of the Brisbane CBD along the Moreton Bay foreshore, has seen its population grow by just 0.4 per cent between the 2016 and 2021 censuses, well below the pace of the broader city.
Against that backdrop, Brisbane’s planning authority has identified Sandgate as one of its next Suburban Renewal Precincts, with early community feedback gathering already underway in 2026 and a draft plan expected for broader public consultation in mid-to-late 2026. The Chamber wants the community’s priorities in the room before those draft plans take shape.
What Activate! Sandgate! Is Asking For
The campaign’s vision, developed in consultation with planning and property experts, centres on a handful of interconnected priorities. At its heart is a significant enhancement of Einbunpin Lagoon and the surrounding parklands, one of the suburb’s most-loved natural assets, alongside a renewed mixed-use precinct that broadens housing choice and creates new employment and short-stay accommodation opportunities. Crucially, the vision also calls for preserving the bayside streets and avenues that define Sandgate’s character: the heritage-listed Queenslanders, the tree canopy, the unhurried scale.
Chamber President Bill Gollan describes the campaign as a proactive response rather than a reactive one, designed to ensure the community has a clearly articulated position before consultation begins rather than scrambling to respond to a draft that has already been set.
“Sandgate is one of Brisbane’s most naturally beautiful bayside locations, but without thoughtful future planning, we risk falling behind and losing the unique character that makes Sandgate so special,” Gollan said.
“Activate! Sandgate! is about working with the community to deliver a balanced decision, one that protects our heritage, while creating new opportunities for locals to live, work and invest in the area.”
A Suburb Built on Seaside Identity
Understanding what is at stake requires understanding what Sandgate has always been. The Turrbal people, whose land this coast has been since long before European settlement, called the area Warra, meaning an open sheet of water, a name that speaks to the lagoons, wetlands and foreshore that remain central to the suburb’s identity today.
European settlement in the mid-1800s quickly established Sandgate as Brisbane’s go-to seaside escape, with thousands of visitors travelling from the city by the early 20th century to swim, boat and breathe the bay air. The suburb’s population trebled during the 1880s as its reputation grew.
That history remains etched into the streetscape. Heritage-listed Queenslanders line the avenues, while the 1924 war memorial park on Seymour Street anchors the civic heart, and landmarks like the former post office building at Bowser Parade and the 1887 Baptist church at Flinders Parade have been given new lives rather than demolished.
Sandgate’s village atmosphere owes much to the fact that it was bypassed by development pressure when the Hornibrook Highway opened to Redcliffe in 1935, drawing visitors away and insulating the suburb from the kind of rapid transformation that reshaped many other bayside communities.
The Tension at the Heart of Renewal
The planning process underway is not starting from scratch. The Sandgate District Neighbourhood Plan, which came into effect in March 2023, tightened protections for pre-1947 homes across Sandgate, Deagon, and Shorncliffe. However, while the Chamber’s footprint includes Brighton, that suburb’s low-density zoning remained largely untouched by the 2023 plan—a fact that heightens the importance of the new 2026 precinct boundaries.The Suburban Renewal Precinct now in development focuses more specifically on the centre, covering parts of Brighton Road and Rainbow Street, running along the north side of the rail line and extending to Burnett Place, with Einbunpin Lagoon Park and Sandgate War Memorial Park both sitting within the proposed boundaries.
This renewal project operates under a distinct planning mechanism, separate from the standard neighbourhood planning process. By designating Sandgate as a Suburban Renewal Precinct, the framework fast-tracks the transformation of underutilised commercial land into residential and mixed-use hubs, aiming to deliver more housing close to existing services, transport and the foreshore.
Gollan is direct about the economic stakes, noting that without change, the local economy risks stagnation, while also making clear that the Chamber’s vision is about balance, not wholesale transformation.
“Central to the vision is also restoring Sandgate’s status as Brisbane’s go-to bayside suburb,” he said. “Sandgate originated as a seaside escape and can still live up to that today.”
Getting Involved Before the Agenda Is Set
The Chamber’s immediate goal is building broad community support before formal consultation opens, so that when the planning authority releases its draft plan for Sandgate Centre, the community walks in with a coherent, considered position rather than fragmented individual submissions.
Residents and businesses across Sandgate, Brighton, Shorncliffe, Bracken Ridge, Bald Hills, Boondall, Carseldine, Fitzgibbon and Taigum can follow the campaign and get involved through the Sandgate Bayside Chamber of Commerce. More information is available at sandgatebayside.com.au.
Read: Two Sandgate Brothers Who Went to War and Came Home
Published 20-April-2026
Featured Image Credit: Sandgate Bayside Chamber of Commerce
