Crown Sydney reaches halfway mark
Every morning Chuck Clatterbuck takes the construction lift a minute and half up the face of Crown Resorts’ $2.1 billion casino, hotel and apartment tower taking shape on Sydney Harbour, and walks down floor by floor.
The ride will at least double by the time the 71 storeys at 1 Barangaroo Avenue are topped out, mid next year.
“I take 10 minutes at the top to look at the view,” says the 40-year construction veteran, who before moving to James Packer’s Sydney outfit, worked for another gaming billionaire, Steve Wynn on casinos in Las Vegas.
Commercial Insights: Subscribe to receive the latest news and updates
At 33 floors, Crown’s director of construction has reached the halfway mark on a project that is at centre of a court appeal to protect its precious harbour and Opera House views.
So far, Crown has spent half its budget on the intricate building that will be the highest apartment tower in NSW at 275 metres.
Its 82 luxury apartments will sit near the very top of the tower priced from $9.5 million, according to Crown Residences at One Barangaoo’s Erin van Tuil. She won’t be drawn on the penthouse, but figures of $90m or more have been speculated. James Packer has spent $60m on his own two floor apartment in the tower.
The build has been moving at the pace of a floor a week, says van Tuil. Though it will slow as the building climbs and stronger winds and the harsher environment up high take their toll.
View from the construction site of Crown Resorts’ One Barangaroo casino, hotel and apartment tower project. Picture: Hollie Adams.
At 120m, the core of the tower has reached the half way point, and Clatterbuck has started one of the construction team’s biggest challenges, installing the 7,000 triangular glass panels — each one a different size — that make up the twisting facade of the tower.
“Each piece of glass is bar coded,” he says.
“The glass comes from China and goes to Korea to be cut and the frames assembled.”
It is then shipped to Australia and the crew — the tower is being built by Australian construction giant Lendlease — work anticlockwise around the building installing the panels.
Another milestone has been the topping the podium which houses two roof top infinity swimming pools — one for the residents and one for hotel guests.
Concrete was too heavy, so Clatterbuck used a process more common in Las Vegas where pools are often on various levels of resort towers.
“The pools are being made in the US of steel tubing with stainless steel sheeting on it — stainless steel is lighter,” he says.
The pools are also shipped to Sydney before being assembled and tiled on the site.
The project with its luxury 350-room hotel and double height casino floors, is due for completion in the first half of 2021, says Clatterbuck.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
