Crown Chairman James Packer says designs submitted for his proposed luxury hotel and high-roller casino at the Barangaroo development district on Sydney Harbour will place the project alongside the Opera House as a landmark of Australia’s largest city.
Designs for the US$1 billion, 350-room Crown Sydney Hotel Resort, conceived by the architectural firms of Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, Kohn Pedersen Fox and Wilkinson Eyre Architects, have been submitted to a panel of judges for a decision. The panel is made up of representatives of Crown Resorts, Lend Lease, the Barangaroo Delivery Authority and the New South Wales Department of Planning and Infrastructure.
The final design will require approval from the Delivery Authority and the Department of Planning and Infrastructure.
Packer is pushing to increase the allowable height of the development from the approved 170 meters to about 235 meters. This would allow it to dominate other commercial towers approved for the site and afford sweeping views of Sydney Harbour, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge.
The project is being considered by a New South Wales government panel chaired by a former banker, David Murray, which has been asked to assess the net financial benefit of the project to the state. The panel was due to report in April, but the decision was delayed after Crown’s rival, Echo Entertainment, launched a bid to expand its monopoly casino in Sydney, the Star, and extend its exclusivity beyond its expiration date of 2019.
