MGM Resorts' Integrated Resort in Osaka Set To Be Japan's First Casino
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Area Development Plan Approval Among Last Licensing Steps
With the certification of its area development plan, MGM Resorts International has full regulatory approval for its $10 billion integrated resort in Osaka.
The approval from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism allows the company’s regional operations, MGM Resorts Japan, to move forward with its partners to finalize agreements with the Osaka Prefecture on the construction of the integrated resort.
MGM Resorts Japan partnered with Orix Group, a Japan-based financial services group, to form Osaka IRR. The Osaka Prefecture selected the joint venture in September 2021 as its partner to submit the area development plan for certification of the integrated resort. With full approval, the joint venture expects the integrated resort would open in the second half of the 2020s.
"It is an honor to be selected by the Government of Japan to develop a tourism project of this scale," MGM Resorts President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle said in news release announcing the approval. "We couldn't be more excited to get started on the development of one of Japan's first integrated resorts in the great city of Osaka, and we look forward to working with our partner ORIX and Osaka Prefecture/City to realize this long-held goal."
When the deal was announced in September 2021, MGM Resorts said the resort would be built along the water on Yumeshima island in Osaka Bay. The resort would include the MGM Osaka, MGM Villas and Musubi Hotel, totaling 2,500 hotel guestrooms. It would have several food and beverage offerings, retail space, a spa, a fitness center and banquet halls.
There would be approximately 400,000 square feet of conference facilities that could accommodate more than 6,000 visitors. There would also be 330,000 square feet of exhibition space as well as an innovation laboratory. The Yumeshima Theater will hold approximately 3,500 seats.
The project’s initial investment amounts to approximately $10 billion. The joint venture projects the integrated resort would attract approximately 20 million visitors annually, and it would employ approximately 15,000 people.
Casinos have been illegal in Japan, but the country passed an integrated resort law in 2018 to make an exception for casino games at officially licensed establishments to bolster tourism, Reuters reports.
Wynn Resorts have proposed an integrated resort in Yokohoma, Japan, but it took itself out of the running in early 2021, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports. The company expressed continued interest in pursuing a license in another Japanese city, but it was pulling out of its Yokohama plans after it closed a small office in the city the previous summer.
The BBC reports there is an area development plan under consideration for an integrated resort at Huis Ten Bosch, a Dutch-themed theme park in the Nagasaki prefecture.
