Planners call Crown Resorts' bluff on benefits of its Melbourne tower
Victoria’s state planners dismissed key Crown Resorts’ claims in a so-called $100 million public benefits package for its Melbourne hotel-and-apartment skyscraper, but even so Planning Minister Richard Wynne sided with the casino giant.
A $10 million retail arcade and a $25 million sky-high viewing platform Crown highlighted in its plans were not public benefits but instead mostly for the benefit of Crown itself, the state’s planners advised, documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws show.
“The department does not consider the through-block arcade or the tower top facilities at levels 88 and 89 to be a public benefit,” the planners wrote.
“The arcade is not a public thoroughfare and the tower top facilities apparently involve expenditure to gain access.”
They were overruled by Mr Wynne, however, and in February the state government approved mogul James Packer’s $1.75 billion proposed hotel after deeming it to be of state significance and exempting it from normal planning rules.
At the time, Premier Daniel Andrews and Mr Wynne said the government had “taken steps” to ensure Crown and its joint venture partner the Schiavello Group “give back to the state”.
The 90-storey project includes a six-star, 388-room hotel and 708 residential apartments on Queensbridge Street. The scale of the project is more than three times greater than planning rules allow for the Queensbridge Street site.
The package included a $25 million refurbishment of Queensbridge Square and a $15 million upgrade to a former rail bridge over the Yarra, both near the new tower. It also included the new retail arcade and public access to the top levels of what will be Melbourne’s tallest tower. Those two levels will provide entertainment, guided tours and garden spaces.
Mr Wynne has previously released some of the planning documents involved with the approval but only after his planners’ criticisms were redacted.
A spokesman for Mr Wynne defended the decision on Wednesday.
“This is a great example of the minister’s ability to intervene in planning matters where an outcome is thought to be in the best interests of Victoria,” he said. “The Planning Department provided advice on the proposal that only considers the planning implications – that’s the Department’s job – but the minister is duty bound to take a bigger-picture approach.”
Crucial to government’s support was Crown’s $100 million benefits package. Under a formula Mr Wynne introduced last year, developers can trade overdevelopment for public benefits.
A city council analysis of the Crown project calculated matching benefit required should be in the order of $125 million, whereas Crown’s package tallied to only $65 million, excluding the arcade and the viewing platform.
The documents also reveal that $2.1 billion in economic benefits attributed to luxury project is a Crown estimate, not the state government’s.
