Bundoora rezones 40-year industrial land for major residential development

Bundoora's planning landscape is about to face its most significant test in years. Whittlesea City Council lodged a formal amendment request with the Victorian Planning Authority on June 30, seeking to rezone approximately 14.3 hectares of mixed-use and industrial-zoned land between Plenty Road and Settlement Road from Industrial 1 to a Residential Growth Zone. If approved, the change would open the door to apartment towers of up to eight storeys on land currently occupied by low-grade warehousing, a self-storage facility, and several long-vacant lots that have attracted little commercial interest since the early 1980s.

The timing is pointed. Bundoora's median house price hit $842,000 in the March 2026 quarter, a 6.4 percent jump year-on-year according to property data tracked through the Council's housing needs register. Rental vacancy across the suburb sat at 0.8 percent in May, effectively zero by any functional measure, and the waitlist for the 112-unit social housing block on Kingsway Drive has not dropped below 340 applicants since late 2024. Council planners argue the rezoning is a direct response to those numbers, not a speculative exercise.

What the Change Would Actually Mean on the Ground

The Norris Bank precinct, a roughly triangular wedge bordered by Plenty Road to the west, the Ring Road service trail to the north, and the back fences of Gunbower Crescent to the east, has long been a planning anomaly. Neighbouring suburbs have seen infill development push steadily northward, but the industrial zone acted as a hard stop. Under the proposed amendment, which carries the reference number C248WHIT, a developer or consortium could submit plans for a mixed-use precinct combining ground-floor retail or community space with residential floors above, subject to a design overlay the Council intends to introduce alongside the rezoning.

La Trobe University, whose sprawling Bundoora campus sits less than two kilometres south on Kingsbury Drive, has long flagged the shortage of affordable housing close to campus as a recruitment and retention problem. Student accommodation demand has surged since the university's College of Science, Health and Engineering expanded its graduate intake by 18 percent between 2023 and 2025. A precinct of the scale being proposed could theoretically accommodate 600 to 900 dwellings depending on final building envelopes, numbers that would meaningfully shift the suburb's density profile.

The Bundoora Residents Association, which has held monthly meetings at the Bundoora Community Hub on The Boulevard since 2019, formally reviewed the amendment documents at its July 3 session. Members raised concerns about traffic loading on Plenty Road, which already operates above its modelled capacity during the weekday morning peak, and about the adequacy of the existing Norris Bank wetlands buffer, a designated stormwater management reserve that cannot be built upon but whose edges would sit immediately adjacent to any new development footprint.

The Path to Approval, and the Obstacles Along It

Planning amendments of this scale in Victoria require sign-off from the Victorian Planning Authority before returning to Council for adoption. The VPA has set a preliminary review date of September 15, 2026. If the authority requests further environmental or traffic studies, both of which sources familiar with the process say are probable, the timeline could slip into the second quarter of 2027 before any amendment is gazetted.

Once gazetted, individual development applications would still need to pass through Council's standard permit process, meaning no sod would be turned before 2028 at the earliest on even the most shovel-ready site in the precinct. That matters for anyone watching the local property market closely. Landowners sitting on industrial lots within the proposed zone have already begun receiving unsolicited approaches from developers, and at least two sites on the Settlement Road end of the precinct changed hands in May and June at prices well above their assessed industrial-use value, a reliable signal that speculative money has already priced in the rezoning's likely success.

Residents wanting to make a submission on Amendment C248WHIT have until August 8, 2026. Documents are available through the Whittlesea City Council planning portal, and hard copies can be inspected at the Council's South Morang service centre. The next formal community information session is scheduled for July 22 at the Bundoora Community Hub.

This article is general information only and is not personal financial or investment advice. Consider your own circumstances and seek licensed professional advice before making financial decisions.