Titanic project for a mini Las Vegas in Bratislava

A huge €1.5 billion, five-year project bringing a US casino to Bratislava has been announced.

Metropolis, Europe's number one entertainment, commercial and conference centre is to be built at the borders of Bratislava on gross buildable area of over 1.2-million square metres.

(the project will be built within Slovak territory).



How does Metropolis change the face of Bratislava?

• volume of investment:
• €1.5 billion. EUR
• start of construction: end of 2010,
• construction work: 3 to 5 years;
• Area: 1.2 million square meters,
• estimated number of tourists: 5 million per year,
• estimated tax return: €600 million euros,
• impact on GDP of the country: 5 percent
• number of long-term jobs: almost 9000
  3-5 year construction related jobs: almost 20000.

At the intersection of the D2 and D4 highways that lead to Vienna, Budapest and Prague. There are four international airports within 220 kilometers with 40 million passengers yearly, not to mention the tourists passing by on the railways and highways.

"This project will be the new destination of the region, dramatically increasing Slovakia's tourism spend and number of visitors," the developer TriGranit said in a statement on Tuesday.

Metropolis as currently planned is a multifunctional development where one will find retail, leisure, Aqua Park, golf, hotels, casinos, cultural and congress facilities.

Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. - one of the operators planned for the complex – is the largest gaming entertainment company in the world. Harrah’s operates 54 casinos, hotels, convention and conference centers and golf courses on four different continents, just to mention the world famous Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada, or the Emerald Casino Resort in South Africa.

Construction works are scheduled to start at the end of 2010 and be completed in five years giving a boost to local construction activity.

The project has several planned phases: in the first one the shopping centre, the aqua park and the leisure centre with Adventure Park, three hotels and a US style casino with related amenities. The estimated completion date for the first phase is 2012.

Later phases will comprise of the conference facilities, golf courses, further casinos, hotels etc.

The 29 million people in the 220-kilometer catchment area represent the main target group for Metropolis.

The EUR 1.5 bn investment will create more than 10,000 new job opportunities in its construction phase, which will last almost five years. The facility is to generate some EUR 600 million in taxes for Slovakia annually. A total of five to six million tourists are expected to roam Metropolis every year, Simon Bayley, TriGranit's development director, told a press conference in Bratislava.

Bayley said the project is jointly financed by TriGranit and Harrah, but he did not wish to go into details, MTI reported.

The developer first Slovak development was realized in Slovakia in 2000. After several successful Hungarian projects the Polus Center, Bratislava was the company's first foreign development. With this project TriGranit was a pioneer, because this was the Slovak capital's first American style commercial and entertainment centre. It was followed by the opening of Millennium Towers I, and II office towers - in 2001 and 2003 - what again fulfilled already the existing market demands. These were Bratislava?s first "A" class office buildings.

Harrah's (Las Vegas Casino operator) Managing Director of Development, Andrew Tottenham, said at a press conference in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava that the Metropolis could be followed by other projects in Europe but not on the same scale, according to Reuters. This is going to be their flagship in Europe.