Vietnam to go for a spin with Las Vegas
HO CHI MINH CITY: Las Vegas meets Vietnam in late 2009 with the launch of a glitzy casino resort in Vung Tau province.
Construction is under way on Vietnam’s first luxury gaming resort, featuring five themed casinos and a Greg Norman-designed golf course.
Plans include an extensive arts and entertainment district with theatres, museums, retail shops and a cultural centre. Total development cost of the project is projected to be US$4 billion.
Phase One of the project will include 1,200 hotel rooms, a 7,200-square meter Las Vegas-style table games casino, 10 restaurants, an eight-acre swimming pool, and a 200-acre golf course and country club.
Vietnam Casino City is being built adjacent to undeveloped white-sand beaches in Xuyen Moc, Vung Tau province, a two-hour drive east of Ho Chi Minh City.
Paul Steelman, head of Design Group, a Las Vegas-based entertainment and casino design expert behind the Sands Macao and Macao Studio City, is the architect of the project.
The project’s developers are Asian Coast Development Ltd. of Toronto, with partners Fontainebleau Resorts, a US resort developer, and Steelman.
Steelman said, “We are going to make sure that Vietnam Casino City is our most exciting project yet and will transform this city into an unsurpassed travel and entertainment destination.
“The Vietnam casino will resemble a Las Vegas-style gaming and entertainment destination that will offer extravagant entertainment activities, such as gaming, dining, and shopping.”
Steelman said the developers were “excited” that the Vietnamese Government had designated resort-casino development as an essential element of modernising and expanding the country’s tourism industry, making it a priority for 2007.
“Being the architecture firm behind this project, we want to bring the best of America to Vietnamm,” Steelman said.
Vietnam has quietly opened three casinos, all in the northern region, as well as a wager-taking horse-racing track in the south – though the facilities there so far remain off-limits to Vietnamese citizens.
Instead, they are geared to profit from the growing number of gambling enthusiasts from mainland China.
One of the casinos involves an investment by Macau gambling czar, Stanley Ho.
Another gambling facility, owned and operated by a group of Taiwanese investors, has applied to go public on Vietnam’s stock exchange.
The third, about an eight-hour drive from Hanoi on the eastern border with China, is owned and operated by Hong Kong interests.
Ian Jarrett
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