Bloomberry Resorts is a step closer to realizing its goal of launching a casino resort in Quezon City in the Philippines. In a filing with the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) this past Monday, the company has been extended a loan to fund the Solaire-branded resort, giving Bloomberry around $767 million to fund the construction of the project.
The loan was provided to two Bloomberry subsidiaries, Bloomberry Resorts and Hotels Inc. and Sureste Properties Inc. Both have signed an omnibus loan and security agreement, which have led to a ten-year combined loan facility offered by a total of seven banks.
The funds will be used, in part, to cover the “design, construction, and development of an integrated hotel and gaming resort” for Bloomberry’s project at the Vertis North Complex in Quezon City, a section of Metro Manila.
The construction is expected to begin toward the middle of this year and will cover a 3.7-acre (1.5 hectares) site at Vertis. That site was previously purchased by Bloomberry from the Philippine National Housing Authority in 2015. If able to adhere to the schedule, the casino will open in 2021 or 2022.
Since the middle of last year, Bloomberry has been anxious to get the project off the ground. It announced that it was looking to expand its portfolio and wanted the new property to follow the Solaire brand. At the time, however, it didn’t have financing in place and added that a master plan would be made available at the beginning of this year.
The new facility will feature a hotel, a casino, a number of food and drink options, as well as entertainment facilities. Bloomberry has indicated that it is deigned to cater to the mass gaming market.
Bloomberry has been listed on the PSE since 1999, when it as known as Active Alliance, Inc. That company was a manufacturer of consumer electronics and, after suspending operations, became Bloomberry and was approved by the Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2012.
It reached a new milestone this month when it was announced that Bloomberry would soon be included on the PSE Index. It replaces Petron Corp., and is expected to be listed as of February 18.
