Spain’s latest integrated resort hopeful wants to host up to 33 casinos, although the developer insists it’s only a contingency thing.
Earlier this month, California development firm Cora Alpha announced its intention to build a $3.5b integrated resort known as Elysium City in Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura. On Monday, local media reported that the company had submitted its planning documents along with the required €10m submission fee.
When Cora Alpha first announced its project, the plan called for a master casino license that allowed the developer to open four casino gaming rooms across the resort. Cora Alpha noted at the time that it could seek authorization for up to 20 gaming rooms, but apparently has now decided that this is insufficient for its expansion ambitions, and has upped the number of desired gaming rooms to 33.
A Cora Alpha spokesperson claimed that the company wasn’t interested in creating a new Las Vegas in Extremadura, but was simply making the request as “a matter of bureaucratic efficiency,” in that it’s better to have the authority to open new gaming rooms as the need arises without having to go back to the authorities clutching new paperwork.
Cora Alpha’s lofty goals for Elysium City include subsequent phases that could boost total expenditure by a further $10b, but Spanish officials would likely be content if just one of the US-backed mega-resort projects they’ve been pitched over the years turned out to be more than a mirage.
Speaking of which, Hard Rock International’s €2b Hard Rock Entertainment World project in Spain’s Catalan region, which was greenlit back in May, has reportedly targeted a June 2019 start date for commencing construction of its €665m first phase.
However, HRI is still haggling over the price of the land on which it wants to build its resort. The land is owned by the La Caixa bank, which in 2014 agreed to sell the property to the would-be developers of the doomed BCN World resort project for €110m. La Caixa now maintains that the land is worth at least €120m and possibly as much as €140m. HRI respectfully disagrees with this view, and here we go again.
