May
3
City of Dreams update
Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
My favorite magazine, Macau Business, did an article entitled Cotai Dream a few months ago that Ive been meaning to mention. Not a whole lot of new details in it, but there were a few things that I found interesting. I also included a new Destination Macao video of the City of Dreams right below the details. Read more
Nov
10
City of Dreams construction update
Filed Under Macau, Cotai, Melco PBL, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
Looks like everything is on track. From a Melco PBL press release:
Construction of City of Dreams on Cotai remains on time and on budget. The development budget remains in-line with our June 15, 2007 announcement that provided an update on the timing and scope of the project. At that time, MPEL indicated that the direct cost of the construction of City of Dreams, excluding the co-located apartment hotel tower, would be US$1.85 billion and that the cost of the land would be US$279 million – these costs remain unchanged.
Our US$1.75 billion bank facility, when fully drawn, is intended to fully fund the budgeted construction costs of City of Dreams resort and casino. Read more
Nov
10
Problems with Cotai’s City of Dreams?
Filed Under Macau, Cotai, Melco PBL, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
It looks like Ao Man Long’s corruption problems is having an impact on the construction of the City of Dreams. In a recent SEC filing, Melco PBL mentioned the following:
“The Macau Government has granted us a lease for a plot of land for Crown Macau and has offered to grant us a lease for the development rights for two adjacent land parcels in Cotai for the City of Dreams site…However, we have yet to receive either a formal grant of a land concession or an occupancy permit for the City of Dreams site…We cannot predict whether Mr Ao’s removal and prosecution and any further Read more
Nov
3
City of Dreams price tag keeps getting bigger
Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Wall Street, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
Melco PBL filed an SEC document as part of its filing to issue more public equity shares. The Australian did a nice job picking up some of the City of Dreams changes.
“Costs on James Packer’s City of Dreams casino project continue to rise, with the estimate outlay now at $US2.1 billion ($2.26 billion) compared with $US1.85 billion in June and $US1.5 billion last December.
In June, Melco PBL announced a City of Dreams “project review” which put the cost at $US1.85 billion — 23 per cent higher than the estimated $US1.5 billion in the prospectus issued late last year when the company listed on the US market.
The cost of the project, on Macao’s Cotai area, has been hit by a Read more
Aug
20
City of Dream’s Cotai Crisis?
Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Wall Street, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
You think you had a rough week
It was a tough week Melco PBL. Reuter’s ran a story saying that the company could have trouble obtaining the needed financing to finish its Cotai City of Dream’s hotel and casino project. Shares plunged to an all time low as a result.
Reuters said:
“Global credit turmoil is starting to squeeze financing deals in Asia, with bankers saying that Nasdaq-listed Melco PBL Entertainment is struggling to find lenders for its Macau casino projects”
The concern arises from the current paralysis in the US credit markets, where no-one could get a financing package done in today’s environment. The Asian market seems to be in better shape though, and MPEL’s CFO came to the rescue on a Friday conference call with investors:
“The Asian bank loan market is quite separate from the US debt market and it is currently open for business. We are confident that this Asian tranche will be completed in the next two weeks.”
The company’s reassuring remarks, along with the rallying US stock market on Friday, helped MPLE recover most of its losses.
Jul
8
Trump Cotai?
Filed Under Cotai, Melco PBL, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
I thought NYC was the Donald’s City of Dreams
I knew The Donald couldn’t stay away from Cotai. With all the hotels and casinos being built in Cotai, how could the self-proclaimed world’s greatest real estate mogul not throw his hat into the ring?
It looks like Trump could partner with Melco-PBL to brand the City of Dreams’ condos on the Cotai district. This would obviously help the Donald as he continues his quest for world domination, and could help City of Dreams as it brings in a well-known brand that could help sell the units for a premium.
According to TheStreet.com:
Sources familiar with the Macau market say that Trump International has been looking to team up with Melco for a development in the region. The possible partnership appeared to get more credence on Tuesday, when a sales call between Hong Kong office and institutional investors mentioned the likelihood of a deal between the two parties, according a buy-side source on the call.
The 650 City of Dreams condo hotel units are planned for a total of 1.3 million square feet on Cotai with a completion date of year-end 2009.
Jul
3
Cotai Strip® pictures of hotels and casinos
Filed Under Macau, Macao, Cotai, Venetian Macao, Crown Macau, Hengqin Island, Wynn Macau, City of Dreams, Grand Waldo Hotel, MGM Grand Macau, Grand Lisboa, Hotel Lisboa | Leave a Comment
Here are some pictures of the Cotai Strip® hotels and casinos that i’ve gathered from a few places on the web. Sorry for how messy and disorganized this looks - I did my best!
I believe many of my readers have never actually been to Macau, or havent been there in along time, so I hope this helps. I will try to do this more often, so if you have any pictures of Cotai or Macau hotels and casinos that you would like to share, please send them to me ateditor@cotaicasinonews.com. Next time I will have hopefully figured out a better way to post pictures.
Cotai Strip® June ‘07 from
Source: flickr.com/photos/elusivek/
Venetian Macao
Both June 07 | Source: MacauCasinoWorld.com
June, May, May | Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/
AND STEPPING AWAY FROM LAS VEGAS SANDS’ COTAI STRIP®, WE HAVE THE REST OF COTAI:
Grand Waldo Hotel on Cotai June ‘07
Source: MacauCasinoWorld.com
Source: flickr.com/photos/nancy_ho/
Crown Macau
April, May | Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/
City of Dreams May ‘07
Source: flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/
Hengqin and Cotai
Miscellaneous
Free casino shuttles from border crossing | Source:MacauCasinoWorld.com
June ‘07 Grand Lisboa, Hotel Lisboa, Wynn Macau and MGM Grand Macau; MGM Grand Macao | flickr.com/photos/cindyshinkansen/
June ‘07 Grand Lisboa, Grand Lisboa and Hotel Lisboa | MacauCasinoWorld.com
Thank you to everyone for giving me permission to use your pictures!
Jun
21
City of Dreams’ “inferior” Cotai condos
Filed Under Cotai, Melco PBL, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
SMH did a small piece on City of Dreams’ plans for two block of residential units on Cotai. Here is the meat of it:
The apartments on the City of Dreams site are expected to be sold in 2010.
They are clearly inferior to apartments selling at rival casino the Venetian, because Melco PBL is selling for $US850 ($1000) per square foot, versus $US1350 at the Venetian.
If you want to compare these prices to the Las Vegas Strip, take a look below:
Vdara will be the only condo hotel at (MGM’s) CityCenter (on the LV Strip). Vdara will have 1,543 residential units ranging from 500 square feet to 1,850 square feet. Unit pricing starts at around $500,000, or about $1,000 per square foot for the smallest units on the lowest floors.
Jun
17
Melco PBL updates Cotai City of Dreams
Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Wall Street, Hard Rock Macau, City of Dreams, Grand Hyatt Macau, Crown Towers Hotel | Leave a Comment
(3 of 3 Melco PBL postings today)
Up, up and away!
Melco PBL issued a press release that it has secured a US $2.75 billion loan that includes two sub-headings about its Cotai City of Dreams that i’ll talk about. Take a look back at my posting from March after Melco PBL raised its budget for Crown Macau. At the time, I couldnt help but wonder how much City of Dreams was going to end up costing. I’m guessing there’s more increases to come.
1) Announces Substantial investment in Cotai Serviced Apt Hotel Units
The budget was raised from US$96 to $US353 due to a significant change in scope. The company does believe however that the proceeds from the sales of these apartment hotel units will end up reducing the net capital investment of the Cotai City of Dreams.
2) Completes Cotai’s City of Dreams Project and Program Review
Budget raised 23%, from US$1.5 billion to US$1.849 billion due to an increase in scope. The thing with the “increased scope” excuse is that its always tough to determine how much is really “increased scope” and how much is poor planning and rising construction costs. To the company’s credit, the do say that the rise in costs is almost proportional to the increase in gross square feet (3.6 million to 4.2 million), with only 6% of the increase is from inflation.
The company also gives an opening date of March 2009 for its Phase I City of Dreams with the following description:
…consists of substantially all of the 420,000 square foot casino and approximately 85,000 square feet of retail space, as well as the 366-room Hard Rock Hotel and the 295-all-suite Crown Towers Hotel, Cotai. The 1,005-room Grand Hyatt Macau twin-tower hotel is scheduled to open in September 2009.
The entire press release can be found here
Jun
17
Melco PBL Slides
Filed Under Macao, Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau, Wall Street, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
(1 of 3 postings today)
Here is a link for some slides that Melco PBL used for a presentation to investors. Nothing really new, but there are some pretty nice pictures in there.
Apr
4
Melco PBL reports fourth quarter 2006 results
Filed Under Cotai, Melco PBL, Crown Macau, Wall Street, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
Alot of noise, but not alot of news.
Dont be distracted by the strong results from Mocha Slots. Investors only care about Crown Macau and City of Dreams.
I already reported back on March 9th that Crown Macau planned to open May 9th and would be overbudget, so nothing new there. The full cost of the Taipa casino will be about USD $585 mm. Melco PBL says that the upped budget is not due to escalating construction costs, but due to an increase in scope and higher planned pre-opening and post-launch promotion of the property to the mass market.
With the City of Dreams, it sounds like the company is starting to lay the groundwork for a future announcement that the $2.1 billion budget will be increased:
“The company anticipates an increase in the total project budget for the City of Dreams project and will continue to explore ways to mitigate the impact of potential budget increases through various cost saving measures”
If City of Dreams budget jumps roughly 14% like Crown Macau did, you’re looking at another USD$300 million dollars in investment - thats real money. For now though, its still $2.1 billion so lets wait and see.
The first phase of City of Dreams is still scheduled to open in late 2008, with the opening of Hard Rock Hotel and Crown Towers, Cotai to pump traffic through its massive 450 table, 2,500 slot machine casino. A more modest 50,000 square feet of retail space will open as well, followed shortly by a 2,000 seat theatre in 2009.
The City of Dreams second phase is planned to open in 2009, with the opening of the 1,00o room, twin tower Grand Hyatt hotel. This is slightly different than the original plan that included separate Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency branded hotel towers.
Jan
23
Cotai getting Hard Rock Macau
Filed Under Cotai, Melco PBL, ENTERTAINMENT, Hard Rock Macau, City of Dreams | Leave a Comment
Hard Rock Macau! You got to like the sound of that.
Hard Rock announced that they have signed a definitive agreement with Melco PBL for the development of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Macau at Melco PBL’s City of Dreams Casino and Entertainment Resort Complex on Macau’s Cotai district.
The Hard Rock Macau will be joining three other hotels at the underwater themed City of Dreams casino resort complex. The other three planned hotels are the Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, and Crown Towers. Macau City of Dream’s phase I development will include the Hard Rock Macau and is scheduled to open in 2008.
The Hard Rock Casino Macau will feature: (more below the ads)
“…a state-of-the-art Hard Rock Casino with a mix of table games and slot devices; an approximately 380-room Hard Rock Hotel with guest rooms and suites designed by leading-edge Hard Rock designers, plus two custom “Rock Star” mega-suites; a Hard Rock Cafe offering Hard Rock’s updated menu, as well as a designated area for live music and a Rock Shop featuring Hard Rock’s traditional and new rock-star designed and inspired merchandise; a VIP roof-top nightclub with direct elevator service and the best nighttime views of Macau; a stylish casual dining restaurant offering round-the-clock service with Hard Rock accents; a stimulating health and fitness center complete with Hard Rock’s relaxing spa treatment rooms; a variety of uniquely designed meeting spaces; and an expansive pool and entertainment deck featuring Hard Rock’s custom cabanas and underwater music experiences.”
For those who have never been to the Hard Rock Hotel Casino in Vegas, let me just say that words will not do it justice. I recommend checking out the Hard Rock Vegas website. Sure its a casino, but the real action is at the club, bars, live music venue, and the hottest pool in Vegas. The Hard Rock is as cool as it gets in Vegas.