The Big Pineapple at Woombye is set for a $10 million revamp, with plans for a family-friendly microbrewery, sports bar, cafés, retail spaces, restaurant and function facilities at the heritage-listed Sunshine Coast icon.

The next stage of the Big Pineapple’s long-running revival has been revealed, with the famous Woombye attraction set for a major new visitor experience.

According to a report by the Sunshine Coast Daily and The Courier-Mail, the project has secured $5 million through the Queensland Government’s Tourism Icons Investment Fund.

Owner Peter Kendall is expected to match the funding, meaning at least $10 million will be spent on the next stage of the site’s transformation.

The planned upgrades include a family-friendly microbrewery, sports bar, cafés, retail spaces, restaurant and function facilities, along with work on the main building complex.

That building work is expected to include glazing replacement, veranda repairs and energy efficiency improvements.

A new chapter for the Big Pineapple

The Big Pineapple has been part of the Sunshine Coast’s tourism identity for more than five decades.

The 16-metre-high pineapple opened in 1971 and sits on a large Woombye site that has shifted through several eras of Sunshine Coast tourism, from roadside family attraction to festival landmark, heritage icon and redevelopment project.

The latest plans would push the site further into food, drink, events and visitor-experience territory.

Kendall told the publication the funding would help bring new life to the site’s heritage infrastructure while adding new reasons for people to visit.

The project is also expected to support local jobs and tourism activity as the Big Pineapple continues its gradual return as a working visitor destination.

Photo: The Big Pineapple in 1976, photographed by Kevin Hayes and posted by Donna Cannon via Facebook.

What is planned for the Woombye site?

The new-look precinct is expected to include:

• a family-friendly microbrewery
• a sports bar
• cafés
• retail spaces
• a high-quality restaurant
• function facilities
• upgrades to the main building complex
• heritage-building repairs and improvements

The project follows recent restoration work at the Big Pineapple, including repairs and repainting of the famous pineapple, a new café, children’s playground, viewing platform and the return of the train.

Those works helped bring the site back into public use after years of uncertainty around the attraction’s future.

The train also has its own royal footnote. Prince Charles and Princess Diana rode the Big Pineapple train during their 1983 visit to the Sunshine Coast, and the carriage they travelled in has since been restored and placed on permanent display at the site.

The Big Pineapple train has returned as part of the site’s recent revival. Photo: Facebook.

What the revamp could mean for locals

The Big Pineapple is one of the Sunshine Coast’s most recognisable landmarks.

For locals, it is less a standard tourist attraction and more a shared memory: school trips, family photos, festival traffic, the old train, the big yellow shape on the hill and years of wondering what would happen to it next.

A microbrewery and food-focused precinct would mark a major shift in how the site is used.

Rather than operating only as a nostalgia stop, the new plans suggest the Big Pineapple could become a broader day-and-night destination for locals, visitors, events and families.

It also adds another major hospitality and tourism project to the central Sunshine Coast, close to Woombye, Nambour, Palmwoods and the broader hinterland corridor.

The Big Pineapple on a postcard from the mid-1970s. Image posted by Kerryn Andreasen via Facebook.

Part of a wider tourism push

The funding comes through Queensland’s Tourism Icons Investment Fund, which is designed to support major visitor attractions and tourism infrastructure across the state.

Other projects backed in the same round include upgrades connected to Outback Queensland, Great Keppel Island, Brisbane River tourism and Far North Queensland adventure tourism.

For the Sunshine Coast, the Big Pineapple project lands at a time when the region is continuing to rethink how its older icons, live music spaces, food precincts and cultural destinations fit into the next decade of growth.

No opening date for the new microbrewery precinct has been confirmed yet.

YELO will update this story as more details are released.