Plans for one of the world’s largest indoor snow centres near Sydney in Australia have been granted ‘State Significant Development Application’ approval, meaning that the project has the official go ahead.

The $400 million Winter Sports World in Penrith, which will feature a 300m main run and other snow areas for play and learning has taken eight-years of careful planning to reach this stage. 

The venue, located in an area which regularly sees summer temps reach high 30’s and even 40’s Celsius, will also house ice climbing, outdoor rock climbing, restaurants and cafes and a 170-room hotel with conference and function rooms.

The centre has been designed to operate on a zero carbon basis and will have photovoltaic panels incorporated into its rooftop and north-facing wall to help achieve this, generating 50 percent of the resort’s energy. The remaining power will be sourced from offsite solar, wind, and hydroelectric suppliers.

Having won approval, Winter Sports World is now at the detailed design and engineering development stage in advance of construction commencing, property developer Peter Magnisalis who has pushed Winter Sports World through to this stage, has said, noting that.

“We need to take the time in this crucial preparation stage to ensure we get the project right before it can start to rise above the ground.”

Australia has had a 40 year involvement with indoor snow, with Alf Bucceri of Bucceri Snow Making pioneering indoor snow in the mid-1980s and one of the world’s first three indoor snow slopes, Mt TheBarton, opening at Adelaide, closing in the early 2000s. More recently there was also a small indoor snow facility at the Big Banana Theme park on the Gold Coast in the early 2010s.  The Polar Snow company, now based in The Netherlands, which still makes snow for events, movie sets and similar originated in Australia and Australian Kevin Ferris patented a giant revolving indoor snow centre designer he called Ski-Trac which he pushed for over 30 decades at sites around the world, including Sydney, but which did not receive any backing.