Will Bally’s bring the Biff to Queen’s Wharf?

We were promised champagne and caviar. Turns out, we could end up with Coke and crackers.

The $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf casino and resort complex was always pitched to a sceptical populace as a luxurious magnet for well-heeled international high-fliers.

Now Bally’s Corporation, Star’s would-be saviour, is flagging a U-turn – favouring mass appeal over high-rollers, their sights firmly set on middle Australia.

The Queen’s Wharf complex was sold to Queenslanders as a tourist attraction to draw high-rollers to the state.Credit: Glenn Campbell

While, in most cases, such egalitarianism would – and should – be applauded, the whole Queen’s Wharf project was predicated on an economic promise to the people of Brisbane.

It was not about a gambling den for those who could least afford to lose what little they had; it was about making sure punters with money to burn did so here in Brisbane.

After all, the house always wins.

Those promises started more than a decade ago, when then-LNP premier Campbell Newman first spruiked the plan to sell government land to the private sector for a new integrated resort and casino precinct on the north bank of the Brisbane River.

“This is about tourism, about bringing people to our state, bringing people who are only going to come to Queensland if we can have a top offering,” he said in 2013 as he kick-started the process for the north bank’s transformation.

“It has got to be five/six star, and it is about making sure that certain locations in Queensland have that international appeal.”

That was the brief sent to the market, and the one on which Echo Entertainment and Crown competed to win the city’s new casino licence.

And, ever since Echo (later to be known as Star) came out on top as part of the Destination Brisbane consortium, that narrative remained pretty consistent.

High-end glamour? Bally’s Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Credit: John Greim/Getty Images

The Star Brisbane would have high-end shopping akin to Harrods, and a fine-dining precinct to rival the best in the world.

There was the promise of “affluent, sophisticated” travellers who would spend big in the Brisbane economy.

There would be an influx of high-rollers, particularly from Asia, whose fortunes would rub off on the rest of us. We were told Queen’s Wharf would be “unashamedly focused on international tourism”.

How times change.

First up, an investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed a money-laundering scandal that set off a series of events that left the casino giant at the brink of collapse.

Then cracks appeared in the Queen’s Wharf luxury shopping precinct, with legal action against Star launched in the Supreme Court last year.

And, on Friday, Star’s prospective new owner foreshadowed an end to the glitz and glamour, such as it is, at the Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sydney casinos.

US casino group Bally’s has been something of a white knight for Star, which was close to going under before its cash injection this month.

Bally’s operates 19 casinos across the United States, but they’re hardly catering for the top end of town.

Its chairman, Soo Kim, told this masthead on Friday that Bally’s did not operate any venues that “looked like” Star’s offerings in Australia, and they needed to “burn [the business model] down and start again”.

“Everything you knew is over, and you need to start again,” he said. “I think there is a happy medium between pubs/clubs and a VIP-focused business.”

Perhaps unfairly, Kim’s comments immediately planted an image in my mind.

It was from Back to the Future Part II, after Marty McFly travelled to the distant future – 2015 – to learn some salient lessons in time-travel etiquette.

To his horror, McFly sees Biff Tannen’s Pleasure Paradise casino complex dominating the Hill Valley timeline. The kind of cheap, garish, over-the-top aesthetic that would not look out of place in today’s White House.

While Bally’s casinos aren’t Biff Tannen’s Pleasure Paradise (of Back to the Future fame), they’re not Casino de Monte-Carlo either.Credit: Universal

Bally’s is not Biff’s, but it’s not Casino de Monte-Carlo either.

When it comes to Queen’s Wharf, though, it could all be moot.

Star is still looking to finalise a deal to sell off its 50 per cent share in Destination Brisbane to its consortium partners, Chow Tai Fook and Far East Consortium, but Soo has spoken publicly about his desire to maintain control of Queen’s Wharf – or at least manage the casino on the partners’ behalf.

It’s hard to know right now who holds the cards. But if Queen’s Wharf does indeed shift focus from the high-rollers to Brisbane’s masses, it could end up doing more social damage than many have feared.

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