Barangaroo Casino: Billionaire James Packer’s high stakes legacy
Whatever comes out of the Bergin Crown Casino inquiry, Australian billionaire James Packer will have left an indelible mark on his hometown and achieved something his father Kerry could not, writes Annette Sharp.
NSW
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Long after the dust settles on Patricia Bergin’s Crown Casino inquiry and long after the Packer family’s association with a once a powerful 20th century media empire is forgotten, the eyes of Sydney will still gaze upon the wondrous shimmering glass spire that now dominates the CBD’s western skyline at Barangaroo.
As people look they will wonder what drove the reclusive billionaire who managed to build the glass monument during one of the lowest ebbs of his life. James Packer’s Crown Sydney, dubbed the Barangaroo Casino by a defiant media and “Packer’s Pecker” by irreverent Australians who simply can’t help themselves, resembles, from a certain angle, a giant single digit flip-off, a silvery “up yours” to a city of sceptics and critics who have struggled to understand the man who spent the past quarter century trying to a fulfil a father’s wish, to own a casino in his hometown.
Now almost complete, the project has been mired in controversy for eight years — since former NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell announced in April, 2012, that Packer’s plan for Sydney’s second lucrative casino would be considered under the government’s “unsolicited proposal policy” that meant a competitive tender process was not required.
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While the government’s reasons for deviating from custom concerning the tender process may always be clouded and brought cries of “favouritism”, for Packer it was a gift.
UNFINISHED FAMILY BUSINESS
It was a tender process that had cost his media magnate father Kerry the licence to Sydney’s first casino in 1994.
Packer Sr’s Darling Casino project was trounced by a rival consortium comprising Showboat and property development company Leighton Properties, the partnership that would go on to build and run Star City Casino at Pyrmont, today known as The Star.
Kerry Packer had fought ferociously 18 years earlier to win the tender for his Consolidated Press Holdings and its established US casino operator Circus Circus.
When he lost the bid in May 1994, it was a bitter blow for the famous high-roller that would also be felt by his family.
Gambling, after all, was one of his preferred hobbies and the businessman, regarded as a whale in international casinos, loved casinos and was known to spend months abroad every year winning and losing millions at the poker, baccarat and roulette tables.
Three days after learning his bid had failed, Packer launched a counter strike: If he couldn’t beat Showboat/Leighton, he’d join them, he figured.
He pulled out his chequebook and resigned himself to having to buy his way into the winning consortium.
“Knowing a casino licence is a licence to print money, Kerry was desperate to get on-board,’’ one key Packer adviser recalled last week.
But it was not to be and the rival consortium rejected him.
After obsessively examining the defeat, a furious Packer then launched a full-blown campaign to undermine the successful rival bidder while determining to be stealthier in obtaining his next objective.
That he achieved the same year, when he gained a stake in the Crown/Hudcon consortium bidding for Melbourne’s casino licence and driven by his more diplomatic associates, Lloyd Williams and Ron Walker.
Four years later in 1998, Packer would acquire Crown Melbourne.
But he still had a fight on his hands in Sydney where he demanded a public inquiry be held into the Casino Control Authority, the independent body established to safeguard the integrity of the bidding process.
As brown paper packages containing damaging information about Leighton — material unearthed during the building industry royal commission — was circulated to journalists and politicians (Conspress denied the Darling team was behind it).
Governments were aggressively lobbied and the NSW opposition leader Bob Carr was soon on board agitating, unsuccessfully, on Packer’s behalf.
As baptisms of fire go, this would have been Hades for Packer’s only son and heir James, then the largely untested 26-year-old group general manager of his father’s Conspress.
Making his corporate debut addressing a press conference at Sydney’s Park Grand Hotel that year, Packer Jr, the media noted, was impressive as he joked with the press about Conspress’s motives for trying to have the casino authority’s decision overturned.
While the campaign to undermine Showboat/Leighton would fail, it would blood the young Packer in a brutal corporate culture and make plain to him his father’s determination to have — at almost any cost — a casino in Sydney.
That cost, as James Packer, now knows, would be great but the lessons learned, invaluable.
The sheer size, scope and cost of Star, which was worth $80 million more on paper than Kerry Packer’s Darling proposal, had won the day for Showboat/Leighton.
Lesson one: Money talks.
Lesson two: The expensive and exhaustive tender process is best avoided.
Lesson three: One can often achieve more whispering than shouting.
As Crown fights now to keep its Sydney licence with Bergin’s Liquor & Gaming inquiry, which wraps up next week, examining whether it is a suitable licensee given allegations of money laundering and mismanagement levelled against it, Packer has set a course home to the US.
The billionaire, who looked largely changed — a less anxious and agitated man — when he visited the casino site in January, has no intention of attending the planned Crown Sydney launch in December, telling insiders it is too bruising facing up to the intense media scrutiny reserved for him locally.
‘JAMES WAS HERE’
Come February, should the Bergin Inquiry recommend Crown be stripped of its Sydney licence, forcing Packer to possibly convert the casino to luxury apartments and sell them off, as some have speculated, he will still have left an indelible mark on his hometown.
It will be something infinitely more dazzling than the Willoughby television antenna left by his grandfather, TV pioneer Sir Frank.
And more ambitious and permanent — though arguably less necessary — than the monetary donations left by Kerry to several Sydney hospitals.
Packer has called Crown Sydney a “tribute” to his father and said he hopes it will be “the most iconic building constructed in this city since the Opera House”.
While politicians, architects and the public debate the beauty of the building, a glass plinth on which sits an elegant tower of curved folds — or two enormous unfurled sails on a sturdy galleon base to the untrained eye — Packer is entitled to feel proud of his role in driving the development.
The building, designed by architect firm Wilkinson Eyre and built by Lend Lease, is by any measure a stunning addition to the city skyline.
As monuments go, it is spectacular and dwarfs rival casino The Star, the source of so much frustration to his father, which faces it on the opposite shoreline of Darling Harbour.
The design has been described as “chalk and cheese” compared to Kerry Packer’s own 1994 casino design which has been described as a “shopping centre, low and wide and square more in keeping with Kerry’s more pragmatic earthbound sensibility”.
Former friends of Packer Sr believe the old man would be proud of his son’s achievement.
“On completion, the building will be lauded around the world as a testament to James’s world vision and persistence,’’ said Harold Mitchell, Crown director, adding it is one of James’s great hopes that the building will also be enjoyed by generations of Sydneysiders.
It is not a building Packer Sr could have delivered, Mitchell said.
“Kerry had great style and many diverse interests but it was more about Australia, fireplaces and Tom Roberts paintings — and always on a big scale. James has the same big view but he is more iconic and internationally focused,” said Mitchell, confirming Packer has fulfilled his design brief in delivering a building that makes a statement to the world.
Graham Richardson, former lobbyist for Packer Sr, said James has stepped out of his father’s shadow by bringing the Sydney casino to fruition.
“It’s an iconic building. People will always look at it, though they might not all like it. It pushes the envelope for design. And that’s James. He’s been wanting something truly iconic to devastate,” he said.
As to legacy, Richardson was unsure if it is what has driven Packer during recent years following his resignation from Crown in 2018 and the unravelling of Packer’s life due to his dependence on alcohol and ongoing mental health issues.
“I don’t think Kerry ever needed to leave a legacy. Kerry and James are different. James is very determined to be different from his father,” Richardson said.
Despite owning a $60 million penthouse apartment at Barangaroo, the increasingly reclusive Packer has indicated he may never again
live in his hometown, preferring instead to reside in his luxury compounds in LA, Aspen, Argentina and on his gigayacht, IJE.
If he doesn’t set his eyes on his Barangaroo building more than a handful of times in the future, he has indicated he will be happy to console himself seeing it decorating the city skyline in tourism promotions on postcards from home.
A $2.4 billion “James was here” reminder of a son who put it all on the line to fulfil an old man’s dream.
Originally published as Barangaroo Casino: Billionaire James Packer’s high stakes legacy