With bishops and other representatives of the Roman Catholic Church participating in the blessing ceremony, ground was broken last month on the long-awaited Philippines casino and entertainment center complex officially known by the slogan-busting name, “Bagong Nayong Pilipino-Manila Bay Integrated City”—which has mercifully been shortened to Pagcor City or Tourism City.
Located on 40 hectares of reclaimed land on Manila Bay, Pagcor City will feature casinos, world-class hotels, restaurants, convention space, shopping malls, racetracks, amusement parks, educational and cultural centers, a sports stadium, theaters, residences, a hospital district and other facilities.
Planning for the massive project began in 2001 under the leadership of Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) Chairman and CEO Efraim Genuino.
Genuino led the groundbreaking ceremony at the Reclamation Area in Parañaque City. A time capsule containing the plans for the city was buried.
Pagcor announced the approval of plans submitted by four participants in the project: Aruze Corporation of Japan; Bloombury Investments Ltd. with headquarters in the British Virgin Islands; Genting Berhad Group of Malaysia; and the Philippines-based SM Investments Corporation.
The Aruze Corporation concept is the Okada Resort Manila Bay. This is a casino resort with 2,000 standard hotel rooms and 300 VIP suites, an ocean aquarium intended to be the largest in the world, theaters, a sports arena and museum, and a giant “Manila Eye” Ferris wheel, named after the enormous London Eye wheel at Greenwich.
Genting Berhad Group, which owns and operates the Genting Highlands Resort in Malaysia, will be represented by its subsidiary Star Cruises, which just announced it had entered into an agreement with Philippines property force Alliance Global Group. A subsidiary of Alliance, Travelers International Hotel Group, has filed an application for a provisional gaming license with Pagcor. Their joint contribution will be casino gaming, several hotels with at least 2,000 rooms total, a world-class theme park (operated by Universal Studios, Genting’s partner in Singapore), a museum and a tower that will be the tallest in the world.
SM Investments Corporation, one of the Philippines’ largest companies, will partner with Asia Pacific Gaming of Australia. Their plan is to build a world-class gaming facility, a luxury hotel managed by Radisson Hotels & Resorts, a museum and a sports arena. The location will be SM Investments’ Mall of Asia complex, which adjoins part of the Pagcor City area.
Bloombury Investments will build three luxury hotels with 1,500 rooms total, high-end retail shopping, restaurants, a showroom, a museum, and an entertainment and sports center.
When completed, Pagcor City is expected to raise tourism from outside the country to over three million visitors annually. Over 250,000 new jobs are expected to be created as a result. Total investment is to be between $15 billion and $20 billion.
The Philippines’ future casino center is another project richer with the announcement that the Waterfront hotels group will cooperate with an unnamed Macau-based operator to build a 2,500- room hotel with casino inside Pagcor City limits.
The estimated cost of the project is between $500 million and $1 billion. Construction is to begin in 2009 and take four years to complete.
