Stockland's Brooklyn data centre tops Victoria's A$5bn queue

At a glance

• Nine data centre proposals worth more than A$5 billion are waiting on Victorian Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny, The Age reported on 1 November 2026.

• Caretaker mode is expected to begin at 6pm on 3 November, and proposals not decided by then are likely to wait until after the 28 November election.

• Stockland's Brooklyn application leads the queue, with a two-storey, 250MVA data centre on industrial land 10km west of the Melbourne CBD.

• Its acoustic design houses 96 rooftop chillers in a lined enclosure so the campus can meet night-time noise limits.

Victoria's planning minister has until 6pm on 3 November 2026 to decide a queue of data centre applications before the government enters caretaker mode for the 28 November state election. The Age reported on 1 November that nine proposals worth more than A$5 billion are before Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny, and that any not decided by the deadline are likely to wait until well into 2027. A Victorian government spokesman told The Age that every proposal goes through a rigorous assessment. The spokesman declined to say how many would be decided in time.

Stockland's Brooklyn data centre in Melbourne's inner west heads the queue, with about A$935 million in direct building and site costs. Its planning documents set out a two-storey, 250MVA campus on industrial land, with an acoustic design built to meet night-time noise limits.

Stockland plans a 250MVA campus at Brooklyn

Stockland Development lodged the application for 413 Francis Street, Brooklyn on 21 May 2026 under the Development Facilitation Program, an accelerated state pathway for significant economic projects under which the Minister for Planning decides. It seeks a staged, two-storey data centre with 250MVA of ultimate power capacity in the Industrial 1 Zone. Stockland won NSW consent on 1 October for a 49MW data centre at Macquarie Park.

The planning report describes two data hall buildings 18.3 metres high, with 7.2 metres of rooftop plant above, and about 75,000 square metres of floor space across the campus.

The quantity surveyor puts direct building and site costs at about A$935 million, before owner-supplied equipment and contractor indirect costs. The campus would replace warehouses on the northern part of the Brooklyn Distribution Centre, which Stockland owns beside the West Gate Freeway. The centre has 130,161 square metres of lettable floor space, The Urban Developer reported in May.

A Stockland spokesman told The Age the site is in an established industrial precinct with the zoning and network capacity this type of development needs. CDC's Brooklyn campus on Geelong Road is about 500 metres west, The Age reported, and the city's other sites are on the Melbourne data centre map.

Homes 170 metres away set the noise limits for Brooklyn's chillers

The nearest homes are about 170 metres west of the site on Millers Road, and 675 metres east on Francis Street, according to the noise assessment Marshall Day Acoustics prepared for Stockland. The assessment covers the 96 chillers on the two roofs, 48 on each building. It found the chillers need 11 decibels of reduction to meet the night-time limit at a home on Eames Avenue.

An acoustically lined rooftop enclosure, a lined air-intake labyrinth and lined discharge stacks will allow the design targets and noise limits to be met, Marshall Day found. Routine testing of the 112 backup generators is to take place in the day only and is expected to comply with the daytime limit.

Stockland has designed the campus without water-based cooling, The Urban Developer reported. Premier Ben Carroll released Victoria's Sustainable Data Centre Action Plan on 22 September, four months after Stockland lodged. The plan sets a 150-metre buffer from homes and requires cooling on recycled or non-drinking water.

Applications left open at 6pm are likely to wait for the vote

Brooklyn and the eight other applications in the queue face the same deadline. Victoria's caretaker guidelines say caretaker begins when the Legislative Assembly expires and runs until a government is returned or a new one is commissioned. Almost all of Melbourne's proposed data centres are assessed through the Development Facilitation Program, The Age reported, so applications not decided by then are likely to sit with the planning minister until after the election.

Victoria's councils have called for a pause on new approvals. The Municipal Association of Victoria represents all 79 councils in the state. It resolved at its October state council to seek a moratorium on new or expanded data centres until a comprehensive planning and environmental framework is in place, the ABC reported on 30 October. Hobsons Bay City Council has objected to the Brooklyn application, according to The Age.

What to watch

The 3 November deadline. The state's ministerial permits register records each decision against its application. The Brooklyn entry lists the application as received, with no decision recorded.

The 28 November election. Applications still open at the deadline are likely to wait for the planning minister in the government formed after the vote.