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The hugely ambitious Gran Scala project, an amusement and casino resort destination planned for Aragon in north-eastern Spain, is raising some eyebrows and generating quite a buzz in the casino industry. British-based consortium International Leisure Development’s Christian Colus explains what the project means, to Casino International.

With an estimated 25 million visitors a year to its 32 casino hotels, 70 hotels, 232 restaurants and hundreds of shops among its theme parks and attractions, Gran Scala will be second only to Las Vegas in terms of its scope within the casino industry. But is it viable to expect 25 million visitors? Critics have asked questions about supplying water to one of Spain’s driest areas, and Greenpeace says the whole area in Los Monegros should be a nature reserve. Complainants will need to move quickly though – breaking ground for the project is scheduled for September 2008; ILD is not dragging its heels and, according to ILD’s Christian Colus, there is plenty of interest in the development despite concerns of a global financial slowdown.

Casino International: 12 companies are involved with ILD as shareholders, many of which are very wealthy, and I know Aristocrat is part of this. How did they get involved?
Christian Colus: Aristocrat was involved on the gaming side because there is a lot of work to be done with the state of Aragon about the new law that will be launched for the project. The current law of Aragon is not adapted to this kind of project. Not only about the taxes, which is one of the major issues, but the also that it was very difficult in Aragon to have an approval for a slot machine, the new models. Because you need to do in Spanish you need to respect a lot of things that are very different to international standards. So what’s happened, for example, a provider like IGT or Aristocrat will take a lot of time and expense for what, for sell one or two slots, because there is only one casino in Aragon. So it is not possible. So the work was to work on the document with the state to have exactly the same offering as that in Macau, or in Las Vegas, you know, and to work on the on the international standards – and of course to allow English. That was the major problem. Because if you allow English directly you can have the possibility to buy all the slots from all the biggest catalogues from IGT, Atronic, Aristocrat.
CI: In terms of the development, the amount of casino hotels that you’re talking about (32) is a huge number for any country to take on; Spain doesn’t have a huge number of casinos anyway, does it?
CC: It is important to forget Spain in the conversation as such. We are creating a new destination in the same way as Dubai, Orlando or Las Vegas exists. Spain is not the most important potential market. The problem in Spain is that the casinos don’t work. Why? Because the slots are very old. If you have the time to visit one casino in Spain – except in Barcelona and Madrid where they have done a lot of investment – they are very old slots because they cannot allow English, you know, as we mentioned earlier.

CI: Why Aragon?
CC: Why Aragon? Because first we have the situation, within a 300km radius we have almost 26 million people, with Aragon exactly in the middle. Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao, Toulouse are all close by. And second, with Expo 2008 taking place in Zaragoza, they have done a lot of work to the infrastructure. One of them is the fast train, and we’ll have a fast train station inside of the project. So it will be at almost one hour from Madrid and Barcelona by train.
There are three airports, one is completely new, the two there are quite handy, at less than 60km from the land.

CI: It’s such a huge project, it almost seems unreal in scope.
CC: We have done a lot of market study, and the idea was to propose something very big. And now, you know, we have got a lot of call for a lot of potential operators. I don’t speak only about casinos, but hotels, restaurants, theme parks, it’s incredible. Because everybody wants to be in something big; something big gives you the guarantee that it will work. There are many destinations in Europe, medium-sized destinations that are in a lot of problems and are working only with public money. But something this scale shows confidence, it shows that it will work because there is a lot of investment and people will come to see a lot of things; maybe if you’re not interested in casinos you will stay to see some spectacles, some theatre, some theme parks.
The idea to have five theme parks the size of Disneyland was very strong, because we had some meetings with big operators, park operators, who we are still negotiating with, and they’re interesting because they still want to be mixed with casinos because they think that is the future of entertainment. To mix casinos, but not be casinos, the kind of casino in Las Vegas, with spectacle, with ambition. And so we already have three theme parks located and we are negotiating with two big companies; we’ll also have 15 middle-sized parks with a lot of concepts that are interesting too. We’re creating the first destination of its kind in Europe.

CI: It’s ambitious to have 32 casino hotels opening together, along with everything else. Or will the launch be staggered?
CC: Of course it will be not 32 casinos the first day, but it might be 14 initially. We have eight groups that are already involved and it should be relatively straightforward to have 14 up and running when we open. So two theme parks, some hotels, accommodation centres, I think 40-50 per cent of the project will be ready on the opening, and five years later we will complete all the concept.

CI: So what is the total overall investment to make the project happen from start to finish?
CC: There is a lot of confusion on the price, really. Everybody speaks about 17 billion Euro. 17 billion is the total investment, but for everything, for the structures, for the casinos, the theme parks, the hotels, everything.

CI: Are there preferred partners or can anyone buy a parcel of land?
CC: We have a big competitor of Aristocrat that want to do a casino and we say, yes, of course, it’s open to everybody that has the money and wants to do it. We give the same price for everybody. No preference, no; the only problem we can foresee is a big fight for the different themes! Everybody wants to do Athens, or Rome but don’t want to do Cro Magnon, for example!

CI: What is the hoped for completion date?
CC: We have some important dates. The first one is to begin to work on the construction. The state were asking us to begin the construction the 17th September 2008. Why? Because the 16th is the end of the international expo.

CI: How are you going to select the right partners? What criteria must they meet to be taken on board?
CC: First, of course, you know the state will do some compliance at first. For example, if a very well known casino group is coming, it will be quite easy to give an agreement. If it’s someone that we don’t know, he needs to prove that he has the ability to manage a casino, to do the construction and to have the money to do it.
We don’t have ten years to do selection, is the problem. When you have a lot of time you can do a big selection, a competition, so people that agree and are very well known, you know, it’s more easy for Aristocrat as for slot provider to know the people if they are able or not to do that kind of business. But there is also a lot of groups that are not involved in casinos, in real estate for example, that are interested in doing a casino, that want to be candidates, and we say, OK, in that case they need to present some resumé of people managing casinos, and if they can present a solid project, because they have the money but they don’t have the know-how they could have the licence too. We’re not limited to existing casino groups.

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