SkyCity selling site earmarked for hotel
CASINO giant SkyCity has folded its cards over plans for a fivestar Queenstown hotel.
It has put a 1ha Frankton Rd site, bought for $16 million in 2019, on the market.
SkyCity Entertainment Group had planned to build an internationalclass, 100plusroom hotel that could have accommodated highrollers playing at its Beach St casino.
It would have had lake and mountain views.
Subject to a law change, it could have included an inhouse casino, transferring the licence from its currently closed Wharf Casino, although the company had kept its cards close to its chest on that possibility.
The local office of Warren and Mahoney Architects was due to design the hotel after winning an architectural competition.
A SkyCity spokesman confirmed the 1.0153ha site — which it required Overseas Investment Office approval to acquire — had been listed with Colliers Queenstown.
As to why it was selling, the spokesman said that ‘‘the sale aligns with the current company strategy’’.
Colliers is marketing the site, about halfway between Frankton and the Queenstown CBD, as ‘‘the largest remaining vacant lakefront development site along Frankton Rd’’.
The information memorandum states that with appropriate zoning for highdensity development, the site’s location, ‘‘combined with the moderate sloping contour and natural terracing down to the foreshore, helps provide superior winter sun over other locations both to the east and west . . . which are more shaded by Queenstown Hill’’.
Having approved access off the state highway also added value, it suggested.
The property’s latest capital valuation was $17.6 million.
The sale deadline for 633 Frankton Rd was initially next Thursday, though it is understood that may be pushed out by a couple of weeks.