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US gaming magnate (and friend of Trump) to build MASSIVE entertainment complex in Madrid

Fiona Govan
Fiona Govan - [email protected]
US gaming magnate (and friend of Trump) to build MASSIVE entertainment complex in Madrid
The massive resort is planned for the east of Madrid. Photo: Cordish

Cordish Companies unveiled plans for a €2.2 billion ($2.3 billion) investment outside Madrid on Thursday with a project that is expected to create over 50,000 jobs.

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The entertainment complex stretching across a site of 134 hectares ((330 acres) will include casinos, cinemas and luxury hotels providing 2,700 rooms. It will also house a massive shopping mall and convention centre.

The plans for Live! Resorts Madrid were unveiled in a press conference in Madrid on Thursday morning claiming it would generate 56,433 jobs and bring in between €4bln - €6 bln to the region within the first five years.

Located in Torres de la Alameda, near Madrid’s airport, it will be the first complex of its kind in Europe.

But it is not the first time such a project has been planned for Madrid.

Sheldon G. Adelson, the American billionaire casino magnate behind Las Vegas Sands, had grand plans to open a €25 bn ($30bn) mega-resort on the same site.

Dubbed Eurovegas, by the Spanish press it was to include 12 hotels, six casinos as well as a conference centre, golf course, cinemas and shopping malls and was forecast to create 250,000 jobs.

But the project folded in 2013 after the Spanish government refused to accept his demands for financial concessions and an exemption from a nationwide ban on smoking in public spaces.

But a spokesman for Cordish was at pains to point out that Live! Resorts Madrid was very different from the failed Eurovegas plans.

"Our approach is not to create a Vegas-style environment," said Abe Rosenthal, the company's executive vice-president for development.

"It is a project that is very different from others that have been raised in the past. It contains a small element of gaming, but the concept is completely different from those raised in the past," said Joseph Weinberg a partner at Cordish Companies, at the press conference.

He added that the project was not looking for subsidies or any change in legislation.

"We work closely with local people and do not believe that this project will generate opposition because we will work with local companies in the construction and when it is up and running," said Weinberg.

"We believe there is a very strong possibility that we will increase theinvestment to the three-billion-euro range by adding more hotel and congress space over time," he added.

The company filed a request for a licence for the projectwith the regional government of Madrid on Wednesday and it expects a reply within five to six months, he added.

The Cordish Companies is a family firm with its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland that has developed real estate and leisure districts in several cities across the US, including Baltimore,Philadelphia and Atlantic City.

CEO David Cordish, whose grandfather founded the company in 1910, is a close ally of Donald Trump and introduced him at a fundraising dinner in Maryland in June, 2015.

 

 

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