Akihabara News (Tokyo) — The partnership between Wakayama Prefecture and a business consortium led by the Clairvest Group aiming to build an Integrated Resort (IR) including a casino at the Marina City site is now a done deal.
This is also the first basic agreement across the nation to be signed between a local government and a casino operator, a key first step on the road to opening the first Japanese IRs in the latter half of this decade.
The next step, should there be no major changes in the national policy, will be for Wakayama and the Clairvest consortium to compile a joint application to the central government, which must be submitted between this October and the deadline of April 28, 2022. Government decisions on licensing are expected to be made in the months following the deadline, perhaps around next summer.
Clairvest Group is a Toronto-based based investment firm known for casino holdings in Latin America and elsewhere, and has been one of the early movers in Japan market. It’s local subsidiary is Clairvest Neem Ventures, and the consortium it leads also includes the French casino operator Groupe Partouche and AMSE Resorts Japan.
The Clairvest consortium’s proposal is to construct a US$4.3 billion luxury casino resort at Marina City, featuring hotels, exhibition areas, a casino, and all of the other attributes required under the terms of the 2018 IR Implementation Act and subsequent Cabinet decisions.
If it is licensed, the plans call for the Wakayama resort to be built on a 560,000 square meter plot of land, intended to host about 13 million visitors a year. It would potentially become the first casino resort to open its doors in Japan around autumn 2027.
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