The regional government of the Spanish capital of Madrid has rejected a development proposed by Cordish Gaming for a €3 billion (US.5 billion) integrated resort with a casino and Cordish is threatening legal action over a process it contends was tainted by “very serious irregularities”.
It’s the second time the government has given the project the thumbs down?Live! Resorts Madrid, as it’s called, which was to occupy 92 hectares of land (227 acres) near the city’s international airport.
According to Spanish online news outlet El Confidencial, the government rejected the plan on the belief that it relies too heavily on gaming in its first phase, this despite revisions Cordish submitted in May designed to address that concern with a greater diversity of non-gaming attractions.
That diversity is critical in Spain for a gaming project to receive official designation as an Integrated Development Center, or CID, which carries with it significant land-use advantages, and a tax rate of 10 percent rather than the country standard 15-45 percent, and can be awarded only once every 10 years. A CID also allows an operator to offer gambling on credit.
“The project does not have relevance from a financial, leisure and cultural point of view, and does not have enough impact,” said Madrid Counsellor of Finance and Employment Engracia Hidalgo.
Cordish’s original proposal last December called for a €2.2 billion complex with an 11,000-square-meter casino, 4,000 hotel rooms, convention and meeting facilities, shopping and restaurants. A 2023 opening was slated around projections of €780 million-plus in revenue in its first full year. Of this, around 62 percent would come from 100 table games, 30 poker tables, as many as 1,500 machine games and a large sportsbook.
Government sources said project would generate 57,000 direct and indirect jobs and, according to Cordish, contribute €195 million in taxes a year.
Baltimore-based Cordish, a commercial development giant specializing in large-scale retail and entertainment venues, operates a Live! branded casino in its home state and has won a license to develop a casino in Philadelphia.
It’s not known if the company will be permitted to try a third time in Spain.
Cordish, in the meantime, has gone on record with a statement expressing annoyance at having learned of the second rejection not from the government but through information leaked to the media.
The statement went further to allege “very serious irregularities” in the application process regarding “professional secrecy” of intellectual and industrial property and said the company will “vigorously pursue the exercise of all legal actions that may be in defense of their legitimate interests against the regional government and the responsible persons concerned.”
