Melco Crown Opens City of Dreams Casino in Macau

Macau - As reported by Bloomberg: "Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd. opens its City of Dreams casino today in a $2 billion bet that Macau will rebound from a slump that prompted rival Las Vegas Sands
PBL has big plans for its City of Dreams in Macau.  Corp. to halt construction on a neighboring project.

The complex on Macau’s Cotai Strip has 516 gambling tables in a 420,000-square-foot casino, Hard Rock and Grand Hyatt hotels as well as a multimedia theater and shops run by DFS. A poor reception for City of Dreams may spell “the endgame for us,” Melco Crown Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Ho, son of Macau billionaire Stanley Ho, said last month.

City of Dreams, across the road from Asia’s largest casino resort, the Venetian Macao operated by billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, will test Macau’s plan to turn the reclaimed swamp of Cotai into a gambling and entertainment center that surpasses Las Vegas. Adelson suspended construction of a second property on the strip in November as revenue fell and credit markets seized up.

“The gaming sector had a very bad year in 2008 because of a weakening Macau economy,” Winson Fong, who helps manage $2 billion at SG Asset Management H.K. Ltd., said in an interview. “Now, people are buying into the sector because as a speculative one, it tends to perform better during a recovery,” said Fong, who doesn’t invest in casinos for ethical reasons..."