Maitland puts 48ha Thornton brickworks employment plan on exhibition

Maitland City Council endorsed a draft development control plan for the 48-hectare Brickworks Road Employment Lands at Thornton, New South Wales, at a meeting on Tuesday 20 October 2026, sending the plan for light industry, warehousing and manufacturing out for public exhibition for at least 28 days, the Maitland Mercury reported.

The site, at the corner of Raymond Terrace Road and Haussman Drive, is a former brickworks and clay quarry that was rezoned from rural to employment use in December 2023. The draft plan divides the land into lots ranging from about 2,000 square metres to one hectare and sets aside an environmental corridor used by endangered species, according to the outlet. No proponent, developer or landowner has been named for the site.

Why it matters

Thornton’s rezoning three years ago cleared the way for employment-generating uses on the land, but a rezoning alone does not deliver lots ready to build on. The draft development control plan is the next procedural step, setting the built-form and subdivision rules that future development applications on the site will need to meet. Without it in place, applications for the land would have no settled framework to be assessed against. The Mercury reported the plan is intended to serve the growing suburbs of Thornton and Chisholm with light industry, warehousing and manufacturing space, placing employment land close to new housing. Hunter councils, including Maitland, have separately pressed the state for $938 million in infrastructure funding tied to 61,000 planned new homes, underlining how much new growth the region’s employment and transport land is being asked to absorb.

For an operator eyeing the precinct, the practical read is that planning groundwork keeps advancing even with no proponent attached yet. A finalised development control plan lowers the holding risk of acquiring a lot once the land comes to market, because the built-form rules will already be settled rather than negotiated case by case.

The numbers

The draft plan covers the full 48-hectare site and divides it into lots of roughly 2,000 square metres up to one hectare, earmarked for light industry, warehousing and manufacturing. The rezoning that enabled this took effect in December 2023, and the exhibition period triggered by the council’s 20 October 2026 endorsement runs for a minimum of 28 days. No construction cost, lot pricing or jobs figures have been published for the precinct, and no proponent or developer is named in the council’s own process or in the Mercury’s report.

What’s next

The draft development control plan stays on public exhibition for at least 28 days from the council’s 20 October endorsement, during which submissions can be lodged before councillors consider a final version. Separately, councillors at the same meeting raised the unresolved road upgrade at the Haussman Drive and Raymond Terrace Road intersection bordering the site, Cr Mitchell Griffin said development was going “full steam ahead” of the promised road works, which he said were due about four years ago and still have no delivery date. That does not change the exhibition timeline, but it points to road capacity, not the planning controls, as the open question before any lots on the site are built out.