Billionaire Manuel “Manny” Villar, Forbes magazine’s richest man in the Philippines for 2022, will open what CNN described as a “Las Vegas-style casino resort” in Manila in 2023.
Villar is a former fishmonger who served as senator from 2001 to 2013, was senate president from 2006 to 2008, and made a failed bid to become president in 2010. He has a net worth of approximately $8.3 billion. His planned Gold Coast Entertainment City will span 198 acres in the Las Piñas-Parañaque area.
“It’s a big development,” Villar said recently. “We will be launching next year, early next year.”
The entertainment complex will include a casino, hotels, condominiums, a retail district and a theme park to be constructed by Villar Group’s Prime Asset Ventures Inc.
Villar said the group will recruit a foreign gaming company to operate the casino. According to Asia Gaming Brief, the $1 billion integrated resort will be “on the same scale as Solaire,” also in Entertainment City in the capital of Manila.
“That will be the biggest in terms of land area,” he said of a project that would be the fifth integrated resort in Entertainment City, following Solaire, City of Dreams, Okada Manila and Westside City Resorts World.
