Crown Resorts has sold a Melbourne development site that it once planned to turn into the city's tallest building, according to a report from Casino.org.
The property at 1-29 Queens Bridge Street, known as the One Queensbridge site, has gone to commercial real estate group PDG. The Australian Financial Review reports the selling price was AU$85 million (US$57 million). The source material does not include a statement from Crown or PDG confirming the figure, and the terms of the deal are not otherwise disclosed.
What was sold
The site covers nearly 1.3 acres. It consists of the long-shuttered, two-storey Queens Bridge Hotel and four adjacent boarded-up office and retail buildings.
Crown acquired the site in 2017, when it was still controlled by its founder, James Packer. The plan was a 90-storey tower with 388 hotel suites and more than 700 private residences. The building would have been Melbourne's tallest and was to connect across Queens Bridge Street to the Crown Melbourne resort and casino.
Crown partnered with Schiavello Group, an Australian property developer, on the project. The partnership stalled the tower in 2019 because of slowing apartment demand in the city centre. During the 2020 pandemic, Crown bought out Schiavello's 50 per cent stake for AU$80 million.
The regulatory backdrop
Months after that buyout, an inquiry in New South Wales examined Crown's suitability to hold a gaming licence for its new Sydney resort. It found that Crown had failed to protect its Melbourne and Perth casinos from being used to launder money. It also found that the company had done little to keep criminals off the premises.
Those findings prompted inquiries in Victoria and Western Australia, which reached similar conclusions. According to the report, the outcome included Packer's ousting and the forced sale of his stake in the company he founded.
In 2022, Blackstone took Crown private in a takeover valued at AU$8.9 billion. The report says Blackstone paid AU$450 million in fines after state officials deemed Crown unsuitable to hold gaming licences. In exchange, Crown was allowed to keep operating its casinos under government-appointed monitors. Blackstone also invested another AU$130 million to improve operations and bring the company into compliance.
Crown has since been deemed suitable in New South Wales and Victoria. The report says the company hopes to receive a suitability determination in Western Australia in the coming months. No date for that decision is given.
Asset sales and finances
The Queens Bridge sale is part of a broader pattern of asset disposals. Casino.org says Crown narrowed its annual loss in the 2024 financial year to AU$165 million, from AU$199 million in FY2023. Revenue declined 0.2 per cent.
The report says Crown's finances were also strengthened in July, when Blackstone sold Crown's 20 per cent stake in restaurant and hotel group Nobu for AU$1.3 billion.
Casino.org also reports, without naming sources, that Crown is open to offers for its Crown Aspinalls Club, a members-only casino in Mayfair, London. It says VIP play there has declined since the British government scrapped the duty-free system for foreign visitors, meaning fewer high rollers from Arab Gulf states. Crown and Blackstone are additionally said to be exploring a sale of the Capital Golf Club. Neither claim is confirmed by the companies in the material provided.
The source does not say how PDG intends to use the Queens Bridge site, nor whether any further sales have been agreed.