Crown Resorts reveals Barangaroo hotel, casino plans

Plans submitted to the NSW Planning Department reveal a 271m skyscraper with opulent inclusions such as six floors of VIP gaming rooms, members club on the 24th floor and two high-rise pool terraces offering sweeping harbour views.

The plans come after more than 3½ years of deliberations at the waterfront site, which is the largest urban renewal project in the nation, and a design competition attracting the likes of Renzo Piano, Kohn Pedersen Fox and winner Wilkinson Eyre

“Today is an extremely important milestone for the Crown Sydney Hotel Resort,” Crown chairman James Packer said.

“Our latest application to the department shows how much ­architectural work has gone into designing a building that will be recognised globally and that ­Sydney can be proud of ... it’s just stunning.”

Taking inspiration from a ­series of eclipses, the 71-storey tower will consist of a 350-room, five-star hotel and 66 ultra-luxury apartments, in addition to six floors of VIP gaming rooms, restaurants, retail and a series of pool decks and outdoor terraces.

Sky villas and a “sky penthouse” will occupy the building’s uppermost seven floors, including four-bedroom apartments each occupying an entire floor, and a two-storey penthouse with five bedrooms over two levels at the building’s pinnacle mooted to be Australia’s first potential $100m sale. It includes a private terrace and garden leading to a pool deck and its own jacuzzi.

The plans mark a turning point for the company, which until this week had also been pursuing the Queens Wharf development in Brisbane that would make it the largest gaming operator on Australia’s eastern seaboard.

Crown declined to comment on the Queens Wharf decision, only to say that the location of Barangaroo in Mr Packer’s home town meant the project had always been the group’s priority. “Personally this is a very special project for me,” he said. “I want to build Sydney one of the world’s great six-star hotels here. The city deserves it.”

Gaming analysts were unfazed by Crown’s loss of the Brisbane project to Echo Entertainment and the Destination Brisbane Consortium, labelling Crown’s bid a strategic move to challenge a competitor, rather than to expand its footprint.

“It was very important for Echo to win it, but is it a really big negative for Crown not to win? Probably not,” CLSA analyst Sacha Krien said. “It won’t necessarily affect their operations, but it could have been an opportunity to break Echo’s monopoly in Queensland for not a huge capital cost to Crown.”

Source: The Australian, Samantha Hutchinson, July 24^th 2015
Originally published as: Crown Resorts reveals Barangaroo hotel, casino plans