Wakayama prefecture has announced that it will extend the scheduled opening of an integrated resort on the artificial island of Wakayama Marina City by one year until the spring of 2026.
The revised schedule is Wakayama’s response to a recent announcement by the central government that the launch of the application period for candidate locations and their operator partners would be postponed by nine months until October 2021.
The government has also released a revised basic policy draft for review, including provisions to tackle infectious diseases such as COVID-19, contact rules between IR operators and civil servants, business compliance and measures against problem gambling.
The new timelines would make it difficult for the prefecture to realize its originally billed plan of being the only IR to open in time for the 2025 World Expo in Osaka.
Tatsunobu Yokoyama, director of Wakayama’s planning and policy bureau, said, “It may not come in time for the Expo, but I would like to proceed with our goal of opening the first IR in Japan.”
Wakayama will change the deadline for submitting proposal documents from operators from 19 October 2020 to 15 January 2021, and the priority selection has been changed from January 2021 to spring of 2021.
Canada’s Clairvest Neem Ventures Co., Ltd. and Hong Kong’s Suncity Group Holdings Japan Co., Ltd. have submitted applications related to the public offering for a Wakayama IR.
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