James Packer and co eye his future Sydney home

James Packer has revealed the hotel and restaurants of the $2.4bn Crown Sydney project will open earlier than scheduled.

James Packer tours Crown Resorts’ Barangaroo site in Sydney on Wednesday.

James Packer has revealed the hotel and restaurants of the $2.4bn Crown Sydney project will open three months earlier than scheduled as he said he wanted to spend more time in the future in his former home town.

During a tour of the Crown Sydney development on Wednesday with his partner, Kylie Lim, his mother, Ros Packer, and Crown independent directors Helen Coonan and John Horvath, Mr Packer said the hotel and hospitality parts of the project would open in December, ahead of the expected formal opening of the casino in February 2021.

By then the results of a public inquiry into Crown being conducted by the NSW gaming regulator are expected to be known.

Mr Packer yesterday viewed levels 48 and 49 of the project that will house the apartments for which he paid $60m in 2017.

Mr Packer on Wednesday revealed he wanted to spend more time in Sydney after moving offshore seven years ago. He now moves primarily between his homes in Los Angeles and Aspen and his polo ranch in Argentina.

“A lot more time. I miss it,” he told the Seven Network.

“It is one thing to see things on an iPad but to be here, this is completely different. This is really happening.”

Ros Packer said the Crown Sydney project was something “very, very close” to her son’s heart.

“He feels that as a family, this is something we are giving to Sydney,” she said during her first visit to the Barangaroo project.

The site was shrouded in smoke from the bushfires that have surrounded Sydney, which alarmed Mr Packer.

“It is the worst thing I have ever seen … happen to Australia,” he said of the bushfires disaster.

“It is making everyone think about climate change and how real it really is.”

On Monday, Crown Resorts and the Packer Family Foundations increased their financial support of bushfire fighting ser­vices and community support ­efforts to $5m.

Mr Packer — whose fortune is estimated at $4.23bn on The Australian’s The List of the nation’s 250 richest people — has spent much of the past year recovering from the third nervous breakdown of his life.

In her first public comments since his breakdown, his mother said her son was now “mentally in a much better space, which is wonderful”.

“It shattered him with the employees in jail in China. It shattered all of us,” she said in reference to the detention in China of Crown staff at the end of 2016 for alleged gambling crimes.

Ms Packer hosted lunch for her son, Ms Lim, Ms Coonan and Mr Horvath and executives of Mr Packer’s private company at the family’s Bellevue Hill estate ­before Mr Packer flew in his private jet to Melbourne. He was due to dine with Crown founder and close friend Lloyd Williams on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, he will tour Crown Melbourne’s One Queensbridge Street development and meet with executive chairman John Alexander.

Crown last year paid $80m to buy property developer Schiavello Group’s half-stake in the One Queensbridge project, which is currently on ice.