$45m Tom Price project

Mining hospitality and accommodation provider Auzcorp will develop a $45 million, 136-room hotel in Tom Price after being selected as the preferred bidder under the government's Landbank program.

The Cottesloe-based company is progressing with approvals for the four-star hotel, to be called Karijini Gateway Resort, over the next year with a view to having it ready by the 2010 tourist season.

The resort will comprise a core facilities building as well as clusters of rooms dotted along the remote landscape.

It will cater for a mix of leisure and corporate travellers, and could include function and conference facilities, a licensed restaurant and bar and indigenous-themed art gallery.

The Karijini Gateway Resort will join the company's other tourist and mining accommodation facilities in the state's north.

Auzcorp opened boutique hotel Mia Mia House in the Desert in Newman last year, and also holds the lease over the redeveloped Port Hedland detention centre, now called the Beachfront Village in Port Hedland.

The village offers more than 400 rooms with a mix of 168 new ensuite rooms and 200 rooms with shared facilities.

The company also provides dining and catering services to mine sites in the region.

Auzcorp is also looking to develop a four-storey commercial complex in Newman, which could include offices, top floor executive apartments, cafes and retail shops on ground level.

The Landbank program was unveiled by Tourism WA in 2005 with the aim of fast-tracking tourism developments by presenting investor ready parcels of land to developers.

Three sites have been released to date - Mt Herschel Rottnest, where the Broadwater consortium was selected as preferred proponent, Tom Price, released in June 2007, and Denham, released in September 2007.

A hotel development site as part of the Albany waterfront redevelopment was scheduled to be released this month, but has been delayed until later in the year.

Tourism WA acting director infrastructure and investment James Hewitt said the government had a further 11 sites in the planning pipeline over the next one- to two-year timeframe, with a further seven sites in two-years plus.