$308-M cruise center to break ground

Integrated resort operator Bloomberry Resorts Corp. plans to break ground for the $308-million  luxury Solaire Cruise Center by the third quarter of this year, aiming to complete the first phase of what is envisioned to be the region’s premier marine leisure gateway that will link Manila to the rest of the world by 2021.

By June or July this year, Bloomberry also expects to break ground for its second integrated resort—Solaire North in Quezon City.

“This new property highlights our commitment to the mass gaming segment, and will leverage on the heavy foot traffic of Vertis North and visitation from Central Luzon,” Bloomberry chair Enrique Razon Jr. said during the company’s stockholders meeting yesterday.

Razon said the group would finalize the project costing by the end of April.

The Quezon City hub can have gaming space that will be as big as the flagship integrated gaming resort along Manila Bay—which now has a foot traffic of about 20,000 a day—but it will be built vertically because of the much smaller lot size.  The structure will have more than 40 floors.

Also, Razon is optimistic on the upcoming Solaire Cruise Center, the first cruise center in the world to be situated within an integrated gaming resort.

“With the growth in tourism, we have more and more cruise ships—10 a week. The timing is right to develop that,” Razon said.

To date, the cruise ships heading to Manila have no other option but to dock at the South Harbor, which doesn’t have any leisure or retail facility.

For the first phase of Solaire Cruise Center that will be finished by 2021, Razon said it would include the pier, immigration, customs and quarantine facilities as well as food and beverage outlets.

On Bloomberry’s overseas expansion, Razon said the group was still looking for new markets, including Japan which passed in 2018 a new law legalizing gambling resorts.  Razon said the group would look for a local partner in Japan. —DORIS DUMLAO-ABADILLA