Cotai—the Building Site

It’s still a little rough around the edges

About the nearest thing to a Cotai Strip ‘stroll’ at the moment is the short walk from City of Dreams, Melco Crown Entertainment’s resort on the north eastern side of the Cotai Strip, due west across the Strip, to the Campanile tower of The Venetian Macao. It’s only recently that a pedestrian crossing was added to that part of the Strip. Previously, walkers took a chance dodging six lanes of traffic populated by Macau’s sometimes erratically driven taxis and minibuses.

A big part of the reason for the lack of ‘strollability’ is that around half of Cotai is still a giant building site. ‘Cotai 1.0’ would have been at or near completion were it not for the global credit crisis of late 2008. That led to Galaxy Entertainment Group mothballing its nearly completed Galaxy Macau IR to the west of the strip behind The Venetian Macao. The crisis also caused Las Vegas Sands Corp (LVS) to suspend construction of its Cotai Five and Six plots on the eastern side of the Strip across the road from The Venetian Macao and the Four Seasons. In April, Galaxy announced it had the funding to start fitting out Galaxy Macau with the aim of opening in the first half of 2011. In late May this year, LVS announced it had completed a US$1.75 billion syndicated loan deal to allow it to recommence work on Cotai Five and Six. That cash complements the US$2.5 billion LVS raised from a listing of its local unit, Sands China, on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 2009. LVS said in a filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in May that the first phase of Cotai Five and Six would be completed by the end of the third quarter 2011. Doubts still remain, however, over the completion date for the whole project. It’s not clear whether Sands China will be able to recruit enough of the 10,500 workers it will need as quickly as it will need them, because of possible restrictions on migrant labour caused by the Macau government’s desire to placate a small but vocal group of the local long-term unemployed.