AS AN exercise in sheer unadulterated hypocrisy the public relations campaign around the Star Casino Tower Development ranks number one with daylight below it.
The original plan for the Ritz-Carlton and apartments complex atop the Star Casino in Pyrmont was to build 66 floors in one soaring tower disregarding all town planning height restrictions.
But public outrage shut it down – so what to do?
A PR plan was needed, enough to bury the public in steamy hot obfuscation, a campaign predicated on everyone in New South Wales being stupid.
THE CHALLENGE
The height of the 66-level tower attracted massive public anger. It was too tall, too overshadowing, too out-of-character for Pyrmont. Even with a proposed four floors of Neighbourhood Community Centre in the tower, it was simply excessive. So how to get the 66 floors approved?
It was a 10-step process:
1. Move the negative focus off the size off the height of the tower. Do that in three ways:
- Instead of having one tower of 66 floors of hotel rooms and apartments, make the project two towers one of 51 floors and one with 16. (That at least would be more welcome than 66 floors.)
- Then repackage the development, not as a Ritz-Carlton hotel and luxury apartments (including four floors of Neighbourhood Centre), but as just one tiny part of a vision … (dah dah!) … Pyrmont Peninsula Place Strategy and Economic Development Strategy.
- Have some poor coot write literally hundreds of pages of four-colour documents filled with history and goodwill, with plans, photographs and maps, appendixes and attachments. Barely mention the tower and only mention the casino in passing. And don’t mention the four floors of Neighbourhood Centre.
2. Make the announcement seem inspiring, complex, yes visionary, and very very big, by including every existing and planned structure and complex anywhere near Pyrmont. For example, throw in the Powerhouse Museum (already built), the UTS (already built), the Fish Market redevelopment (already announced), the Harbourside centre rebuild (already announced), Tumbalong Park (already existing), Thorpey’s Swimming Pool (already built), the Australian Maritime Museum (already built), the marinas, James Craig and anything else already existing that will show how very very big this Pyrmont Peninsular Place Strategy and Economic Development Strategy (PPPS and EDS) seems to be.
3. Add a vague reference to an indoor entertainment and sporting centre “Our own Madison Square Garden” and a Pyrmont railway station on the Parramatta Line (details of both yet to come).
4. To close down Mayor Clover’s objections, promise to turn Wentworth Dogs into a public park, not now, but in seven years time. Say you’ll build the doggie-lovers another one somewhere but don’t get specific because seven years is a long time.
5. Even better, call the whole deal a 20-year strategy that will add “23,000 jobs and 800,000 square metres of office and commercial space”. (All too far away and impossible to prove.)
6. Have NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes launch the PPPS and EDS with hoopla and endless talkback radio. Say it will be a commercial centre to rival the CBD, a wonderful, visionary, cultural, business and residential playground that will be recognised around the world.
7. When the journalists keep harping back to the bloody tower, point out that there are now two smaller ones and anyway most of the tower “public” backlash was by the owners of two terrace houses whose views would have been affected. Call them NIMBYs because NIMBYs put themselves ahead of jobs.
8. When the subject of the Pyrmont Railway Station comes up tell them Government will make a decision about whether it will be built, but not for six months.
9. Get the Daily Telegraph to promote the PPPS and EDS with pages of coverage and an editorial.
10. Finally, remove the link on the Star Casino website – the one that went to the page about four floors of Neighbourhood Centre. Make that page “no longer available”.
That should do the trick. The publicity will run for a couple of days only. And who’ll be able to dig their way out of that pile of obfuscation to actually figure out that 67 floors of hotel and apartments will be approved in the new form.
That, students, is how we get unwelcome developments approved in New South Wales.
History will show that instead of the Star Casino meeting the existing planning guidelines, it got 67 floors, because the entire suburb of Pyrmont was repackaged and rebranded to meet the needs of the Casino.PC
Pyrmont has a long-established precinct plan to be a certain height; higher than Balmain on the next peninsula, much lower than the CBD. But when you walk around Pyrmont, you see, there are lots of quite high buildings. But someone wanted to make a lot of money, and so planning gets chucked. Simple. Planning. Pieces of paper. What’s the difference?
Step back from the spin and Star has listened and done the right thing. The huge tower is gone and instead there are two smaller ones. Credit where it is due!
I bet there are plenty of PR people around who’d admire this campaign. It was masterful from a PR point of view. Well done to whoever put it together
I live in Pyrmont and I actually think the development is fine. What I hate is the way this Government believes that it needs to bullshit us with such a childish campaign. I’m sick of being treated like a child by Gladys and her troops.
The NSW Govt has become a bunch of charlatans and sleight-of-hand tricksters. I don’t mind the development being rammed through but, what I do despise, is the unnecessary con job used to do so. And all because they are, to a man and a women, too pathetic to be seen to make a decision – any decision – that may cause grievance. Such children.
The proposed tower was ridiculous and does not suit the location. Remember the hotel was only a fraction of the tower with much of it residential.
If the hotel is so critical, then ditch the residential portion of the tower and put forward a better proposal.
It’s so hard to believe. Do they think we are so dumb? This is corruption.