The winning tenderer for Sydney’s delayed and expensive Barangaroo project can stand to make more than $200 million from the development, project budgets reveal. However, the successful bidder will also have to fork out an estimated $18.1 million in development levies back to the government.
The Barangaroo Delivery Authority is going to cost the NSW state government $59 million, internal papers show. Running the authority will cost between $5.3 million and $8 million a year until 2018, the government forecasted in a budget prepared in December. But June budget papers show that costs for this year have already escalated to $9.6 million.
New of burgeoning costs on the project come as the Barangaroo Delivery Authority goes on a hiring spree, advertising for a clutch of senior roles including CFO, director of infrastructure, director of property development, development manager and project manager.
There has also been a furor surrounding the environmental impact of the project after the Environment Protection Authority declared in May that the contaminated groundwater at the site was "likely to be migrating from the site to Darling Harbour and could ultimately affect aquatic ecosystems".
However, CEO of the Barangaroo Delivery Authority, John Tabart, told Fairfax Radio Network that there is “no evidence” of this but the potential is there. “The materials must be removed properly so that there is no future risk of that happening,” he said.
