Las Vegas Sands wins Singapore casino bid

An artist's concept by the Las Vegas Sands Corporation for the casino complex

nytimes.com :

Singapore said that it had selected Las Vegas Sands to build and run the first of two planned casino resorts here, choosing the company's vision of a $3.2 billion convention-driven district over three other bids, including two bids that were backed by government-owned companies. "Las Vegas Sands Corp. is honored to be selected by the Singapore Government to build and operate the Marina Bay Integrated Resort," the company said in a statement issued after the decision. "Our top priority is to partner with the Government and the people of Singapore to ensure that we deliver on Singapore's economic and social goals to enhance its status as one of the world's greatest travel destinations." The company promised to open the new resort, which it has named the Marina Bay Sands, by 2009. It was just over a year ago that Singapore lifted a 40-year ban against casinos as part of an effort to boost tourism and stimulate the island-state's transition to a service economy as more and more manufacturing jobs shift to countries with lower labor costs.

While the companies' proposals were kept largely under wraps throughout the secretive selection process, Sands disclosed plans to create a massive "district" whose features included a giant waterfall and a museum designed by Massachusetts-based architect Moshe Safdie, who designed Jerusalem's Holocaust Museum. Sands also played on its strengths as a leader in the convention industry - its chairman Sheldon Adelson created the Comdex consumer electronics trade show. Dangling an economic lure, the company had also promised that its project would create 10,400 jobs, 75 percent of them for locals, and would account for 1 percent of Singapore's entire economy.

Analysts said the project is already shaping up to be the world's most expensive casino resort. It will sit on roughly 51 acres of reclaimed waterfront land facing downtown Singapore that city planners are turning into a new central business district. To make sure bidders focused on alluring designs rather than costs, they took the unusual step of setting the price for the land at S$1.2 billion ($758 million). In return for its investment, Sands gets a 30-year concession to operate the casino, which analysts estimate could bring in as much as $3.4 billion a year in revenue. The government has also thrown in a variety of enticements, including a low, 15 percent tax on revenues and, bidders said, its assurances that it will allow no additional casinos into the country for at least 10 years.

While Singapore's primary objective in introducing casinos is to boost tourism, the Marina Bay project is also aimed at anchoring the city's new waterfront and authorities emphasized that the proposals should take into account that the new resort needed to be as tasteful as it was iconic. "Marina Bay is the future postcard of Singapore," said Robert Garman, general manager of Hongkong Land Singapore, which is developing two new office buildings near the Marina Bay site. It may not be surprising, then, that Sands' museum concept played to more receptive ears than MGM's plan to incorporate a Cirque du Soleil show or Harrah's plan to have Hollywood director James Cameron, of "Titanic" and "Terminator" fame, design an indoor theme park.

Officials have downplayed the role of the casino in the project, euphemistically referring to it as an "integrated resort." Nonetheless, the casino issue prompted an unusually high level of public dismay, mostly over fears that the casinos would increase the country's famously low crime rate and worsen gambling addiction. To allay public fears that the casino would reintroduce organized crime, bidders are being subjected to strict probity checks and Singapore has created regulatory bodies modeled on those in Nevada and Australia. The requirements of the tender also stipulated that casino itself could occupy no more than 5.5 percent of the resort's overall area. To ensure the casinos don't provide Singaporeans with a cheaper gambling opportunity than they now have overseas, the government will require that locals pay either a daily entrance fee of S$100 ($63) or an annual S$2,000 levy.

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