GENTING BUILDING 400-ROOM HOTEL IN NEW YORK
RESORTS World Casino, the top-grossing slots parlour in the United States, broke ground on a new 400-room hotel, here, part of the Malaysian group Genting’s renewed multi-state effort to broaden its appeal to American gamblers.
The hotel marks a US$400 million (RM1.71 billion) expansion at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens that will include additional casino space, along with new retail, dining and entertainment, Resorts World and its parent announced on Thursday.
After a lull in its US activity, Genting is stepping up. The company recently began work on the first major new casino on the Las Vegas Strip in a decade, after letting the project idle for four years.
Genting is trying to gain approval for a project near Boston, and its 88-per cent owned Empire Resorts Inc plans to open a US$1.2 billion casino resort in the Catskill Mountains outside here early next year.
“We want to diversify the portfolio, spread out the risk and be able to leverage international travel by having the right assets in the right cities,” said Genting Americas president Edward Farrell.
The centrepiece of that expansion will be the 3,000-room Resorts World Las Vegas, scheduled to open in 2020 on the northern end of the Las Vegas Strip. Construction on the US$4 billion project just started, said Farrell.
Genting, which also owns the Star Cruises and Crystal Cruises lines, bought the property in early 2013 and said it’s spent the intervening years working on the design.
The Strip hasn’t seen a major hotel open since 2009, and Genting’s timing could be opportunistic, according to Brent Pirosch, director of gaming consulting at real estate brokerage CBRE Group Inc in Las Vegas.
The city is expanding its convention centre and preparing to build a US$1.7 billion stadium for the National Football League’s Raiders.
Genting’s Resorts World New York City generates plenty of proceeds.
Last year it had gaming revenue of US$826.5 million, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, 13 per cent more than Atlantic City’s biggest casino, MGM Resorts International’s Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, and 26 per cent more than the casino revenue of Wynn Resorts Ltd’s flagship Las Vegas property.
Resorts World had paid 70 per cent of the casino’s gross to New York State, or a total of more than US$1.9 billion to New York’s Lottery Education Fund since opening in 2011, said the firm.