Is there a building in the West End that has changed its mind about what it wants to be more often than the Trocadero? From music hall to waxworks, a Guinness World Records attraction to Segaworld, via an indoor theme park that never quite worked and floor upon floor of tourist gift shops, the great pile on Coventry Street has run through more identities than most of Soho put together. The latest, assuming the paperwork all lines up, will see punters wandering in off Piccadilly Circus not for a plate of ribs or a go on the arcade machines, but to have a flutter in a two-storey casino.
Getting the Go-Ahead
London Trocadero to be transformed into casino and restaurant https://t.co/WbntIqZevX pic.twitter.com/galkWBvv9e
— Standard News (@standardnews) October 2, 2025
The vote, taken by Westminster Council’s Planning Committee on the 30th of September, was unanimous, which is not always how these things go when the word ‘casino’ is on the agenda.
Genting’s plans cover the first floor and the basement of the 13 Coventry Street site, the same space once occupied by the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant and Opium nightclub, the latter having shut its doors back in 2019 after a shooting. Refurbished, knocked about and joined together by escalator, the two floors will be able to hold up to 1,250 people, with a restaurant thrown in for good measure.
James Axelby, Genting’s Chief Financial Officer, told councillors that the scheme would cost in the region of £40 million and could create around 350 jobs, which is no small thing for the borough. He was also at pains to head off the obvious objection, which is that a casino of this size amounts to a great deal of drinking dressed up as a night out. He insisted that alcohol was not expected to account for more than 7% of the venue’s takings and that the whole thing was built around what he called a ‘first-class’ gaming experience rather than a booze-led one.
Concerns
James Axelby told the committee:
At the heart of the scheme is a robust operational management plan which addresses matters such as dispersal, noise and smoking so the venue operates smoothly and respectfully within the area.
Gambling & Alcohol Concerns
Not everyone was won over, as you might imagine. The Soho Society, rarely shy when it comes to defending its corner of the map, argued that dropping a multi-floor casino into the Trocadero would ‘represent a massive intensification of gambling and alcohol-led activity,’ and warned that venues of this scale tend to encourage late-night drinking, regardless of Axelby’s claims.
Crime & Antisocial Behaviour
The other concern is that the alcohol will see the crime and antisocial behaviour that so often trail along behind it also coming to the fore. It is a fair enough worry in a part of town that hardly wants for either after dark, though whether a casino is the thing most likely to tip the balance is another question entirely. The council’s own planning officers, for their part, took a rather more relaxed view. There is, they pointed out, no legal change of use in swapping a nightclub for a casino and on balance they reckoned the new arrangement is an improvement on what came before.
Casinos, the officers added, do not tend to draw the ‘large, high-spirited’ crowds that clubs do, and because the venue would run around the clock, there would be none of the sudden 3am spill onto the pavement that gives licensing officers the most concern. There was even a small tussle over bicycle racks, with Councillor Robert Rigby pressing officers to squeeze some sort of cycle-parking contribution out of a scheme he was fairly sure would be ‘making quite a lot of money.’ There is, it should be said, a catch, and not a small one.
Licensing Issues
Westminster does not hand out new casino licences, so Genting cannot simply conjure one from thin air. Instead, it plans to move across the licence from its old Crockfords Club on Curzon Street, which was the grand Mayfair institution that closed in 2023, giving it to the Trocadero, with a separate 24-hour licensing application due before the council on the ninth of October. Planning permission, in other words, is only half the battle. Still, for a building that has spent the better part of two decades casting around for a purpose, a casino may yet prove the most fitting bet of the lot.