Crown Resorts tries to sort out Barangaroo’s project delays

James Packer’s company won the government’s approval to run a VIP-only casino without poker machines at Barangaroo, but the project has been delayed.

Australia.- Crown Resorts has strengthened its efforts via lobbying, to ensure its US$1.2 billion project in New South Wales, the Barangaroo hotel and casino resort, gets green light, preventing further delays. The project has already been scaled down to 275-meter high building and 77,500 square meters comprising a luxury hotel, multi-million dollar residential apartments, retail space and a gaming floor, whilst the VIP casino will cover around 6,805 square meters of the total floor space.

The application for approval to construct Crown’s proposed 270 metre casino, hotel and apartment tower at Barangaroo South was submitted to the planning department on July 2015, which in turn asked Crown to provide more information regarding to traffic management, heritage impacts and encroachment on public land.

Packer has expressed his frustration with this delay. “It’s been a marathon process to get where we are in Sydney; we proposed the hotel almost four years ago and we are miles behind our opening date schedule,” he said. “At our end we really want to get moving.”

Barangaroo’s developer Lend Lease, also submitted an application to begin construction works, which has also been delayed over a legal dispute and the time it is taking to review the government-appointed Design Advisory Panel concerns. A spokeswoman for the department of planning said it “is yet to receive a formal response from Lend Lease to the independent Barangaroo design advisory panel’s report.”

Upon the complexion of the process, the department of planning will send a recommendation to the independent Planning Assessment Commission.