Where there is the potential for future uses other than residential, design the ground floor of a mixed use development to have a minimum floor-to-floor height of 4.5 metres.
The ground floor of a mixed use development should be designed to allow future changes of use. Note that this recommended dimension is given as a floor-to-floor height, as the floor-to-ceiling height in a retail or commercial development will depend on the fitout. Commercial buildings have increased service requirements and therefore will generally require minimum floor-to-underside-of-slab heights of 3.5-4.0 metres to achieve minimum ceiling heights of 3.0 metres but this is dependent upon structure and services depths.