May 4, 2015 was a good day for Aquis Group with regards to the Yorkeys Knob project. The project has been in a standstill while awaiting  environmental approval. The Federal Government granted approval for the Aquis Great Barrier Reef Resort. Pat Flanagan, director for the project, said the decision is another progress milestone.

Flanagan told media, “This approval demonstrates that the project has been developed to be sensitive to the site’s environmental values and respects the values of the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef and wet tropics rainforests.”

The environmental approval and planning assessment leaves only the casino agreement. The State Government has not provided approval yet, but Flanagan is hopeful.

Aquis is currently in talks with Queensland Government to integrate a casino into the resort. Flanagan hopes to have fruitful discussions with the government in the future to get the approval required for gaming. The project is expected to utilize $8 billion providing 3,750 construction jobs in stage one and another 3,500 for stage two. When the resort is operating about 20,000 jobs will be available. The full project with casino is slated to earn $988 million in construction revenue and $10.2 billion when it is in full operation.