West End's Absoe site set for transformation The Absoe Furniture site at West End. Photo: Tony Moore A prime piece of inner-city real estate, a stone's throw from West End's popular cafe strip, is set to become a master-planned community. Fairfax Media understands the 2.6 hectare Absoe Furniture site, behind the Gunshop Cafe on the corner of Boundary and Mollison streets, is under a $40 million contract. Plans for the site include an underground commercial car park to relieve parking in the suburb. The Absoe Furniture site at West End, behind the Gunshop Cafe. David Devine's Metro Property Group is understood to have placed a $40 million contract over the property. The contract is now going through the "due diligence" stage. Metro Property Group spokesman Peter Hobbs said the company was looking at "multiple sites" at any one time. "But we really are not in position to make any comment on that site at this stage," he said. However, Mr Hobbs did not dispute the brief story in Fairfax's Australian Financial Review last week, which reported the company was in "due diligence" to buy the site. The Absoe site is bounded by three streets and has several older heritage-listed buildings, laneways and a village feel. It is home to a range of small businesses, community projects, artists and the Absoe Furniture business. However ,the site is earmarked for a community master-plan, overseen by Brisbane City Council, as a subset of its South Brisbane Riverside Neighbourhood Plan. Council planning documents show this broad-brush plan includes the heritage buildings, open space as well as new residential units and an underground car park. "Pressure upon local parking is relieved by inclusion of an underground commercial car park forming part of the integrated redevelopment of the Absoe site," the planning documents say. A spokesman for Lord Mayor Graham Quirk said no application to develop the site had been lodged because the property sale was in its very early stages. The council's plans talk of a new urban plaza on the corner site. "A new urban plaza or public space on Boundary Street links activity from Boundary Street through the site to Mollison Street where the City Glider station is located," the plan says. Retaining and reusing heritage buildings on the Absoe site gives new life to old buildings. Mixed-use development integrates active ground floor uses and community spaces with residential and commercial uses. The plan says new pedestrian links - and possibly new roads - will have to built to connect Mollison, Little Jane and Wilson streets. West End Community Association president Darren Godwell said they anticipated a mixed-use residential project on the site. "There will have to medium to high-level density residential," he said. And I expect them to start carving out some streets and creating some legible pathways through the site because it is bordered on three sides by streets. It is also a good site for additional green space. A spokeswoman for Absoe Furniture also said she could not comment.