The Dream Island project, which envisions a €1.5 billion mixed-use leisure and residential complex on a Danube River island in the middle of Budapest, has won the license to build a massive casino that is crucial to the development.
The 40,000-square-meter casino will have over 200 gaming tables and 4,000 slots. The license gives the developers exclusivity in the Budapest area for 20 years from the date of opening, with an option to extend the license for an additional 10 years.
Now that this license has been obtained, construction can begin on the more than 350,000-square-meter project. Besides the massive casino, included are approximately 3,000 hotel rooms in several hotels of different categories, 1,000 leisure-use apartments, a convention center for up to 3,500 delegates, a 1,500-seat opera house, a 3,500-seat multi-purpose theater, a marina with an anchorage for 300 vessels, a shopping and entertainment center that will include a high-end “Designer Avenue,” a Roman culture museum, and parking facilities for approximately 5,500 vehicles. The site of the project is the southern end of Obuda Island.
The announcement came from Plaza Centers N.V., which holds a 30 percent stake in Dream Island. The other consortium members are CP Holdings Ltd., a member of the group of companies controlled by Sir Bernard Schrier and the owner of the Danubius group of hotels (30 percent direct interest); MKB Bank, a leading Hungarian commercial bank which is a subsidiary of the German Bayerische Landesbank (30 percent indirect interest); and a company controlled by the managing director of the consortium (10 percent direct interest).
Ran Shtarkman, president and CEO of Plaza Centers, said in a statement, “Europe, unlike the rest of the world, has never had access to substantial gambling-led destinations such as Las Vegas and Macau. On completion, Dream Island will fill this gap for the 350 million people who live within two hours flying time of Budapest, sparing them from long continental flight times and enabling them to enjoy, relax, gamble and entertain themselves in a megaresort of the biggest magnitude in Europe.”
