Wraps Come Off The Star Brisbane’s Luxe Hotel

The Star Brisbane’s signature luxury hotel has been revealed.

Part of the $3.6-billion Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct, The Star Grand, Brisbane’s newest five-star hotel, will offer 340 luxury rooms across two arc-shaped towers overlooking the Brisbane River.

A sports bar, Brisbane’s largest hotel ballroom and a reimagined Fat Noodle restaurant by celebrity chef Luke Nguyen were also part of the plans revealed.

Hotel guests will have exclusive access to three pools on the resort’s Leisure Deck, a 12,000sq m open-air “oasis which delivers two football fields of public space, plus direct access to The Star Brisbane’s Sky Deck, a 250m rooftop runway of restaurants and bars 100m above the Brisbane River”.

The hotel offering includes four Skyline Penthouse Suites with oversized freestanding bathtubs where “guests can soak in sunset skies”.

In June, The Star announced it had again pushed back the opening of Queen’s Wharf, this time to April 2024.

The development had been slated to open at Christmas 2023, which was itself a delayed due date.

Queen’s Wharf and Dexus’s $2.5-billion Waterfront Brisbane are stretching the already constrained labour market in south-east Queensland, driving up the cost of skilled trades.

Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson told The Urban Developer a major bugbear for the industry was the increasing number of mega projects that were dragging on.

“Queen’s Wharf needs to get off the books … it’s going much longer than expected, so it’s holding huge numbers of people on the site and not releasing them,” Hutchinson said in February.

Meanwhile, late last year The Star Entertainment Group’s casino in Sydney was fined $100 million and the NSW casino watchdog suspended its licence to operate after a damning report into its operations.

The Star Brisbane chief operating officer Kelvin Dodt said this week’s unveiling was a glimpse of what’s to come as Queensland’s newest entertainment and leisure destination moves towards its opening next year.

With more than 50 new food and beverage venues to be a part of Queen’s Wharf, some of the world’s top chefs have signed on for the precinct, according to The Star.

Celebrity chef Luke Nguyen is among them with his popular South-East Asia restaurant Fat Noodle confirmed for a “reimagined experience” as part of The Star.

Nguyen has enjoyed a decade-long partnership with The Star at its Brisbane and Sydney resorts.

“Brisbane is on the precipice of being the next foodie capital of Australia; the food offerings, the art and culture, and tourism is growing, and the city is making a name for itself in its own right,” he said.

“There’s an undeniable buzz about town that is only going to be supercharged by the opening of The Star Brisbane next year.:”

The Star Brisbane will also home to a 732sq m Sports Bar; “the city’s premier venue to celebrate the world’s biggest matches, races and games”.

Endorsed by “homegrown heroes” such as the Brisbane Broncos, The Star said the Sports Bar would have more than 100sq m of mega-LED screens and stadium-like surround sound, plus three exclusive VIP booths large enough to seat an entire NRL team.

Also confirmed is The Star’s signature cocktail bar Cherry, a companion to The Star’s Sydney and Gold Coast venues by the same name, which will “reflect the atmosphere and energy of its central location within the resort, offering a vibrant and bold 360-degree bar to enjoy a cheeky mix of cool cocktails,” according to The Star.

Also revealed was The Star Brisbane’s Event Centre.

Anchored by Brisbane’s largest hotel ballroom, with the capacity to cater for up to 2000 guests, the state-of-the-art Event Centre “draws inspiration from Queensland’s subtropical landscape and signals a new era for events in Brisbane”.

Set to commence a staged opening from April 2024, the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane is set across more than 12ha on the Queensland capital’s river edge.

▲ A render of The Star Grand Event Centre, revealed as a part of the coming Queens Wharf development.

It is expected to attract an estimated 1.4 million additional visitors each year once open and will provide a pedestrian link between two of Brisbane’s largest cultural and lifestyle precincts, connecting South Bank and Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre (BCEC) to Queen’s Wharf and The Star Brisbane via the Neville Bonner Bridge.

Queen’s Wharf Brisbane is being delivered by Destination Brisbane Consortium, a joint venture led by The Star Entertainment Group alongside its Hong Kong-based partners, Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and Far East Consortium.