• Address: Lot 1 (No. 178) and Lot 82 (No. 196) Bushmead Road, Hazelmere WA 6055
• Applicant: CDC Data Centres (Canberra Data Centres)
• Application: DA-386/2026, advertised by the City of Swan
• Built form: four storeys, up to 36.5 metres high (CDC describes two new buildings)
• Floor area: 85,945 sqm in total, made up of 66,465 sqm classed as warehouse and 19,480 sqm as office
• Parking and access: 87 bays (72 staff, 15 contractor and visitor), two crossovers to Bushmead Road, an internal heavy vehicle road and an off-street truck waiting bay
• Plant: backup generators, chiller plants, drainage, landscaping and waste treatment areas
• Not included: a future electrical substation, which sits outside this application
• Operations: 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with up to 75 people on site at any one time
• Decision maker: Metro Outer Development Assessment Panel, with a Responsible Authority Report from the City of Swan
• Submissions close: 5pm, Thursday 5 November 2026

Neither the City of Swan nor CDC has published a megawatt figure, a land area or a construction cost for the Hazelmere campus. Treat any capacity number you see quoted elsewhere with caution until it appears in the panel documents.

CDC says it picked 178-196 Bushmead Road because the land is already zoned industrial, has access to services and transport and would keep impacts on nearby communities to a minimum. The advertised package is thorough. Eighteen documents sit on the City's engagement page, from planning and acoustic reports to arborist, bushfire, geotechnical, traffic, hydraulic and wastewater studies.

The company's own project page sets out a staged timeline. Site preparation and early works are flagged for late 2026, main works from early 2027 and fit-out from mid to late 2027. Operations would start in late 2028 with the campus fully running by late 2029. That timeline obviously depends on the panel approving the application.

CDC also claims the project would support about 425 jobs across the WA supply chain during construction and about 220 ongoing roles once fully operational. Its modelling puts the economic value added at $270 million during construction and $55 million a year once the campus is running.

Power is the real story with any data centre and Hazelmere is no different. CDC says the site would connect at transmission level and that the company pays for its own infrastructure, so household supply is not affected. The site has room set aside for a new substation, although that substation is not part of DA-386/2026 and would need its own approvals path.

On cooling, CDC says it uses a sealed closed-loop system that is filled once and then recirculated, so no water is consumed to cool the servers. Other water needs would largely be met by rainwater captured on site. The company also says it matches 100 per cent of its power use with renewable electricity and has a net zero by 2030 commitment.

For the property market the substation detail matters more than it first appears. Researchers have pointed out that operators chase sites close to existing high-voltage transmission and substation capacity because new grid connections can take years. Land that already has that access, or can credibly get it, is in a different league from ordinary industrial land.

Hazelmere has been here before. GreenSquareDC proposed a data centre of roughly $600 million at Lots 14 and 15 Stirling Crescent, about two kilometres from the CDC site. That application drew 1,890 submissions, 1,829 of them opposed. City of Swan staff recommended refusal, largely on the grounds of generator noise. The proposal was withdrawn in May 2026.

The Stirling Crescent site was about 40 metres from the Helena River (a registered Aboriginal heritage site) and next to the Trillion Trees nursery and restoration project. Those same groups are now focused on Bushmead Road.

Trillion Trees says the CDC Hazelmere site holds one of the last pockets of established native vegetation on private land in the suburb, with habitat for threatened black cockatoos and snake-necked turtles. A petition is calling for independent assessment. The Woodbridge Ratepayers Association and the Lower Helena Association have also met with CDC. Concerns raised include night-time noise from cooling plant and generator testing, heat, traffic on Bushmead Road and the cumulative effect of more industrial development.

CDC's response is that noise at the nearest homes on Mary Street should sit at about typical suburban background levels, with acoustic treatment to bring it down further. It says it is still studying wildlife impacts and that its design includes acoustic and heat management measures.

One reason these applications are so contested in WA is that the planning system was not written for them. Data centres are not a defined land use in any WA planning scheme. Councils have to decide whether a proposal fits an existing category such as warehouse or industry. That is why the Bushmead Road floor area is split between "warehouse" and "office" in the advertised plans.

The City of Gosnells, which approved CDC's $415 million Maddington campus in the Maddington industrial area in 2025, has since adopted a policy covering environmental requirements such as water and noise. The City of Swan has moved to prepare its own local planning policy for data centres. In August a councillor in the City of Stirling tried to have data centres classed as an "X use", which would have banned them anywhere in that city. The motion failed 4-8.

For landowners the takeaway is simple. Until the state defines data centres properly, each application is decided on its own merits and local opposition can carry real weight. That adds time and risk to any deal that relies on a data centre approval.

Hazelmere is already one of Perth's most sought-after eastern industrial locations, with heavy haulage access along Bushmead Road and quick links to the airport and the city. Recent deals show how firm demand has been. In August 2026 local firm Birchmead bought 167 Bushmead Road, a 4.43 hectare site, off-market for $8.5 million. That works out at roughly $192 per sqm. Next door, Barings now owns the Hazelmere Logistics Estate at 189 Bushmead Road after Altis bought the 9.1 hectare block for $31.5 million around four years ago and built a 13,000 sqm office and warehouse on the spare land.

Further back, 26 Central Avenue sold in 2023 for $20.6 million plus GST, or about $425 per sqm across 4.8 hectares, to a developer planning warehousing. The spread between those rates comes down to servicing, zoning certainty and how ready a site is to build on.

A data centre operator adds a new type of buyer to that pool. Hyperscale and colocation groups value land on a different basis from logistics developers. What they are really paying for is power, fibre, flat developable area and a realistic approvals path. When one of them commits to a precinct it tends to lift interest in neighbouring large lots, especially those with frontage to major roads and a line of sight to transmission infrastructure.

The flip side is that the Hazelmere experience shows these projects are not a sure thing. Owners should not assume a data centre premium until an approval is in hand.

• Know your power story. Distance to transmission lines and substations, plus any capacity information from Western Power, is now a headline selling point for large industrial sites.
• Document your site properly. Contour surveys, geotech, bushfire and vegetation reports are exactly what CDC lodged. Having them ready makes a site far easier for a serious buyer to assess.
• Be upfront about constraints. Native vegetation, nearby homes and heritage sites shaped the outcome on Stirling Crescent. Buyers will find them anyway, so present them clearly with any mitigation options.
• Market to more than one buyer type. A large lot near a data centre campus may appeal to logistics, manufacturing, energy and digital infrastructure buyers. Campaign material should speak to each of them.
• Show the location visually. Aerial imagery and maps that show road access, the heavy haulage network and nearby infrastructure help buyers grasp a site in seconds.

The CDC Hazelmere data centre sits within a broader build-out across Perth. NEXTDC runs P1 at Malaga and P2 in the CBD, with land banked next to P1 for future growth. Builder Multiplex reported practical completion of Stage Two at P1 Malaga in early October, which roughly doubles that facility's IT capacity. CDC's Maddington campus in the City of Gosnells has been described as a project that will eventually reach 200 megawatts.

On the east coast, CDC's $15 billion Gregadoo campus near Wagga Wagga shows the scale the company is now working at. Premier Roger Cook has also said developers keep approaching the state about the Mid West and North West. WA has about 15 data centres, 13 of them in metropolitan Perth.

• 5 November 2026: public submissions on DA-386/2026 close. The number and tone of submissions will be compared directly with the 1,890 lodged on Stirling Crescent.
• City of Swan Responsible Authority Report: the officer recommendation to the Metro Outer DAP will be the clearest early signal of the application's prospects.
• Capacity and cost: watch for a megawatt figure and project value as the panel process unfolds.
• The substation: any separate application for the future substation will show how much power CDC expects to draw at Hazelmere.
• Local and state policy: the City of Swan data centre policy and any state move to define data centres in planning schemes will shape every future Perth application.

If the CDC Hazelmere data centre at 178-196 Bushmead Road is approved, it will confirm the eastern industrial corridor as a data centre location and add a powerful new buyer type to the local land market. If it stalls, it will reinforce that in Perth the biggest hurdle for data centres is not land or power but social licence.