A McDonald’s drive-through restaurant approved for 330 Nudgee Road continues to raise questions about whether City Plan protections work when it really counts.
Hendra Locals Against McDonald’s say the development is the wrong business in the wrong place.
The development places a high-turnover drive-through outlet on a corner site zoned Character Residential—an area intended for low-density housing. The planned driveway is just 22 metres from the Nudgee Road–Gerler Road intersection, where existing queues already stretch to 50 metres.
Designed to handle 144 vehicles an hour, residents fear even a handful of cars at the lights could block exits and push traffic into surrounding streets.
A council spokesperson told Village Voice the development met City Plan requirements and that independent traffic planners confirmed the roads could handle the increase. A McDonald’s spokesperson similarly stated that its traffic analysis demonstrated compliance.
However, an independent planning expert reviewing the case for this publicationhighlighted a discrepancy: council initially suggested a ‘left-in, left-out’ arrangement, but McDonald’s modelling successfully argued for right-hand turns. Our expert noted that council appears to have accepted theoretical modelling over potential real-world constraints.
Environmental concerns are also front of mind. Our planning expert noted that required concept earthworks plans—which show soil quantities and levels—were missing from public material, making a known acid soils overlay trigger difficult to verify.
The residents’ group is now using Right to Information (RTI) laws to pursue historical remediation records from the site’s former life as a 1960s service station.
Although the land was removed from the Contaminated Land Register in 1999, original certificates were not included in the development application. McDonald’s says it holds them. Village Voice has requested to view the certificates twice without luck.
Our expert warned that the site’s lack of a formal record on contamination registers did not automatically prove it was “clean”, and that confirmation of previous remediation should be provided publicly.
Urban planning expert and University of Queensland Associate Professor, Dr Dorina Pojani, told Village Voice she agreed.
“All environmental documentation should be available to the public, on principle,” Dr Pojani said.
“In fact, that’s why many Freedom of Information laws were devised initially—over environmental concerns.”
Dr Pojani noted that further compounding traffic concerns is the site’s proximity to Hendra State School, located nearby. The breakfast peak will directly overlap with school drop-off traffic.
Queensland Government crash data shows hundreds of incidents within a one-kilometre radius over two decades, including a fatality at the intersection in 2023.
“A car-oriented drive-through generating lots of car traffic should not be right near a school,” Dr Pojani said. “The proposal may be within the legal parameters, but it is not best practice to combine these two land-uses. As planners, we want more kids to be walking and riding to school safely.”
As the community waits for the RTI files, the Hendra approval leaves a lingering question: if a multinational drive-through can override character residential zoning just metres from a primary school gate, is any suburb in Brisbane safe?
The City Plan is designed to protect local character. But at 330 Nudgee Road, it seems those protections are only as strong as a community’s ability to fund a court fight to stop the development.
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Hendra resident Bill Moore, who has been instrumental in organising the grassroots community resistance to the fast food giant, has written about his experience attempting to appeal the development in court. They had to withdraw after exhausting their funds, despite raising $30,000 for the legal expenses through crowdfunding.
“It’s a unique experience for the uninitiated, a visit to the Planning and Environment Court. The quiet, formal spaces. The obligatory navy blue suits, the hushed whispers between lawyer and client, the omnipresent tension, the stolen glances between opponents,” Mr Moore wrote.
“As one of the three appellants fighting against the unwelcome intrusion of a 24/7 McDonald’s drive through in sleepy Hendra, my overwhelming feelings were gratitude and responsibility. Grateful that we live in a liberal democracy that gives us the right to appeal a Brisbane City Council decision, along with the responsibility vested in me by the 430-odd community members to represent them.
“Those feelings faded quickly to frustration when faced with the phalanx of lawyers, expert witnesses and council officers, frustrated at the realisation that the cards are so hopelessly, ruthlessly stacked against the community that this was little more than a well-worn performance for McDonald’s and council, safe in the knowledge of their imminent success.
“That myself and our legal team, consisting of a lawyer and legal assistant, were arguing against the combined might of the biggest fast food restaurant in the world in partnership with the biggest local council in Australia was a bitter irony that wasn’t lost on me, nor my fellow appellants.
“Where next for one of these aggressive, bullying intrusions? Your street perhaps?”
