Destination Brisbane Consortium (DBC) today unveiled landmark designs for Queen’s Wharf Brisbane.
The plans include
- The iconic signature “Arc” building
- A spectacular feature Sky Deck, with restaurants and bars fully accessible to the public
- Five new premium hotel brands, three 6-star venues, including Ritz-Carlton and Rosewood
- Fifty restaurants and bars, from hatted fine dining to pop-up cafes
- Dozens of unique attractions, including a spectacular water and light show, playing several times each night in the new “River Arena”
- A new lyric theatre at QPAC
- Riverfront moonlight cinema
- 12 football fields of public event space
DBC’s proposals also include the establishment of a new, Asia-facing Queensland hotel and hospitality school, headquartered on the Gold Coast, with campuses at Queen’s Wharf Brisbane.
Echo Entertainment Group Chairman John O’Neill AO promised the plans would deliver “the best Integrated Resort in Australia” should DBC be successful in their bid to develop the highly significant city-centre site.
“Firstly, I would like to thank the Queensland Government for providing this opportunity to outline our plans today, and to congratulate them on their foresight and vision, and for the highly professional way in which they have managed the bidding and probity processes,” he said.
For Queen’s Wharf, which he described as “arguably the most significant redevelopment project in the history of the Brisbane CBD”, he added “Brisbane should have the best integrated resort in Australia. Not just a good integrated resort that plays second fiddle to Melbourne, Sydney or Perth, but the best integrated resort in the country”.
Destination Brisbane Consortium today committed to delivering just that.
DBC presented iconic architectural features for the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane development, designed through extensive consultation, research and local expertise to ensure that DBC’s design fits and amplifies Brisbane’s unique subtropical climate, lifestyle, cityscape, traditional cultural significance, and heritage assets.
Echo Entertainment Group Managing Director and Chief Executive, Matt Bekier, described the DBC approach as a “whole-of-precinct vision”.
“By relocating the existing casino, and transforming Brisbane’s heritage Treasury Casino buildings into a premium shopping experience and a new six-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel, DBC’s proposal connects and activates the whole precinct with Southbank, Queen Street Mall and the CBD,” he said.
“By using the whole precinct, we have been able to provide real connectivity to the rest of the city, making sure that this really becomes the new heart of the CBD.
And of course Destination Brisbane Consortium’s scheme does not require an additional casino in the precinct,” Bekier said.
“It is very deliberately, unmistakably, quintessentially Brisbane,” O’Neill added.
He went on to emphasise that for Destination Brisbane Consortium, Queensland is the “absolute, unequivocal priority”.
“Echo Entertainment Group will have more business and more staff in Queensland than anywhere else in the world when Queen’s Wharf opens. We have very significant equity in this development – real skin. So much so that the Board of Echo Entertainment Group recently formally committed to move our corporate head office to Brisbane, if Destination Brisbane is appointed to develop Queen’s Wharf”, he said.
DBC’s design and the many attractions and features were shaped after specific research conducted in key markets across Queensland, Australia and China. The research demonstrated that DBC’s particular scheme will deliver 1.39m additional overnight tourist visitors to Queensland each year from Day 1. “That is a genuine game-changer for tourism in Queensland,” observed O’Neill. “The distinctiveness and appeal of our scheme, together with the huge reach of our Consortium Partners’ distribution channels into China, Asia and around the world, can super-charge Queensland Tourism.”
DBC also estimate that the new precinct will generate at least 8,000 new jobs for Queensland.
“The 8000-plus new jobs this will deliver to Queensland, will be in addition to the over 3,000 people already employed at Echo’s existing Queensland facilities,” said Bekier. “These jobs will be in the operation of the resort, in head office functions and in the new Queensland Tourism and Hospitality School”.
More information:
Naomi Hammond – 0424 861 845
