Mackay Waterfront Place Strategy
An action-oriented place strategy designed to unite stakeholders behind a roadmap for Mackay’s Waterfront and City Centre revitalisation.
Mackay is a place that ticks a lot of boxes - a wealth of great places to eat and drink, boutique shopping, the incredible blue water river running through its centre and stunning beach on its doorstep. On paper, it’s a wonderful liveable city and as a gateway to the Whitsundays, a great stop for tourists too. Yet for all its strengths, local sentiment is that it’s not meeting its potential. This project was about unlocking that potential and turning up the volume on the city’s vibrancy.
Client: Mackay Regional Council
Partner: POMO
In 2018, the Mackay Waterfront PDA was established, followed by a masterplan for the area in 2019. A few years later, catalyst projects are still largely in planning stages so the goal of this project was to make incremental change happen right now, without having to wait for large-scale development. The Place Strategy was to focus on two key areas - the city centre and riverfront. A city with a pristine blue water river could be defined by it, yet this incredible waterfront was largely disconnected from community life.
Our approach, as ever, was to use collaborative engagement to enable the changemakers and build momentum. Over six months, we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders:
Internal Council Teams: Bringing together staff from across different departments to break down silos and see how they could collectively contribute.
Council leadership - multiple touchpoints with elected members, plus 1-on-1s with Executive Managers to ensure all levels of leadership were involved in the process, could contribute their own department’s ambitions and challenges and identify their role in achieving the shared vision of a revitalised city
External Changemakers: A passionate community of small business owners, investor, developers, local networks, creatives, and community groups who were already doing some great work to support the city.
Youth - through working with a local school, the strategy gained a vital youth perspective, where students contributed their own experiences and ideas and articulated a vision for a place with a wealth of recreation and social opportunities.
Through a series of interactive workshops and events, we created repeated touch points with the same people. This wasn't a one-off consultation; it was a continuous conversation that brought everyone along on the journey. This process allowed internal teams to identify their roles in the solution, while community members gained a deeper understanding of the challenges and felt truly heard.
The wealth of local knowledge we gathered was distilled into a clear and practical Place Strategy, underpinned by 27 tangible actions, each with a clear delivery owner and partners.
We then took this list of actions back out to the community and asked them to prioritise what mattered most to them. Instead of traditional engagement, this was in the form of a pop-up placemaking intervention where businesses and community members who had contributed ideas were invited to test them out - through a creative takeover of a central car park.
This crucial step transformed the strategy from a consultant's report into a roadmap with multiple owners. By doing this, we created a powerful community mandate for Council and stakeholders to act, giving them the confidence and social license to focus on the priorities that the people of Mackay had chosen themselves. The placemaking event allowed the general public to be able to understand and share in the vision for a vibrant city centre, and demonstrated that the ideas, energy and capability to make that happen already exist within the community.
What happened next?
Always focused on implementation, we designed the strategy so that each of the 27 actions has clear owners and partners, meaning that delivery responsibility is dispersed throughout Council and across external stakeholders.
After unanimous endorsement in May 2025, within 6 months:
Seven commercial properties were sold, leased or activated in the City Centre and Riverside precincts;
A real estate agency reported that the facade screening directly increased leasing enquiries for the adjacent property, securing a tenant;
Three new businesses opened;
A popular café expanded citing the strategy as a deciding factor;
Multiple developers and investors approached Council about vacant sites.
In a short period, the strategy has catalysed meaningful outcomes across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. This isn't just another planning document - it's a practical demonstration that strategic placemaking, grounded in genuine community partnership and committed to immediate action, can transform unrealised potential into economic vitality for regional cities.
"Council conducts community engagement on all our strategies, but this was different. We saw enthusiastic collaboration with stakeholders passionate about their City Centre and Waterfront. They didn't just want to 'have their say'—they wanted to get involved. We were blown away by the level of positive energy surrounding this project."
- Mayor Greg Williamson