City deserves better than Packer’s pissing contest
BY KIERAN ADAIR
If you’ve ever wondered how much sway gambling carries in the state of New South Wales, just take a stroll down to Pyrmont on a Saturday night.
As the rest of Sydney turns into a ghost town, the Star Casino, nestled on the edges of Darling Harbour, parties through the night. It’s excluded from lockouts, dodges police reporting, and now it seems it’s even exempt from planning regulations.
Last year the Star Casino announced plans to build a new hotel complex on the corner of Pirrama and Jones Bay roads. The tower, designed by architectural firm FJMT, will add another 370 new rooms to the Star, allowing them to cash in on new waves of tourism expected from Darling Harbour’s redevelopment.
There’s just one problem: while the tower might be good for the Star, it’ll most likely be terrible for Sydney.
Standing at 215 metres, the new building will dwarf its surrounds: blocking neighbours views, overshadowing parks, and creating wind tunnels along its corridor. Under the current Local Environment Plan, buildings in that area are permitted to stand no higher than 28 metres, almost a tenth the size of the proposed development. Even the current exemptions, which allow the Star to have three points standing at 65 metres, are laughable compared to the new plans.
“When the casino was first approved the community was promised that it would never exceed the height of the stacks of the Pyrmont Power Station, which was demolished to make way for the facility; building a tower on the site would be a betrayal of the community’s trust.” Alex Greenwich, the State Member for Sydney, recently wrote this to Rob Stokes, the State’s Minister for Planning.
“Towers of such great height are not appropriate adjacent to the harbour where they privatise and minimise the public harbour experience, and this location is in conflict with Darling Harbour precinct’s planning objectives.”
According to Mr Greenwich, the tower is “ad hoc planning at its worst”, citing objections from the City of Sydney Council related to infrastructure capacity and strategic planning guidelines. He’s requested that the Government hold back on allowing the project to proceed to the next stage of planning.
But in New South Wales, money talks. Between 1998 and 2011 The Star made over $847,950 worth of political donations in NSW alone. Since 1998, the gambling industry has made $5,136,292 in political donations across the country.
So far, this seems to have bought them exemptions from all manners of things: from mandatory limits on pokie machine gambling, to lockouts, and the reporting of violent crime.
The good news is that at least the Star’s new tower won’t get lonely. Across the harbour in Barangaroo, James Packer’s new Crown Casino appears to be a fait accompli. When finished it will stand at 271 metres, dominating the skyline of new Barangaroo public park.
But again, money talks. In 2012, James’ mother Ros Packer made a donation of $570,000 to the Liberal party, just weeks after her son was given the right to develop a new casino in the Barangaroo public precinct.
The Sydney Crown began construction last October, managing to secure planning approval despite vigorous public and expert objection to its development.
“It was an ugly exercise in the realpolitik of NSW.” David Shoebridge, the NSW Greens planning spokesperson said. “Both major parties had been duchessed by Crown so there was no real discussion about whether Sydney needed another casino.”
It’s no coincidence that it was around this time that the Star started promoting its new tower. According to Mr Greenwich, “the proposal is not part of any long term strategic plan for the area and appears to be about matching plans and proposals at Darling Harbour and Barangaroo.”
In the coming years these two new developments will come to define the city’s skyline and public spaces, but it’s hard to see how the public will gain any benefit from them. Instead it seems like the future of our city rests on big money, and a pissing contest between Packer and Star over who gets the biggest tower. Public be damned.
