Manchester wins 1st UK supercasino
The northern city of Manchester unexpectedly won the fight to host Britain’s first Las Vegas-style supercasino yesterday, beating off challengers including nearby Blackpool and London’s Millennium Dome.
Most industry analysts had predicted either Blackpool, the Dome or Glasgow in Scotland would win.
Manchester council expects the giant casino will generate 2,700 jobs on its 5,000 square-meter venue and in surrounding bars, hotels, cinemas, restaurants and other sports and leisure outlets.
The former industrial city is now best known as the birthplace of the Britpop music scene of the 1990s dubbed Madchester which spawned the Stone Roses, Oasis and the Happy Mondays, but it still has many poor and derelict areas.
“It’s going to bring a lot of jobs and regeneration to a part of the city that really needs it,” Local MP Graham Stringer told BBC television.
But others were less impressed, including those behind a bid by US entertainment mogul Philip Anschutz, who had already built the foundations for a big casino in London’s Millennium Dome. “We are very disappointed,” said his Anschutz Entertainment Group.
Bookmaker Paddy Power said it had taken just eight bets on a Manchester win, with odds of 16 to 1, while the faded northwestern resort town of Blackpool was the favourite at 8 to 15 and the Dome was in second position at 15 to 8.
“The vision of a ‘New Blackpool’ has today suffered a huge blow,” said Steve Weaver, chief executive of Blackpool Council. “The future of the town now looks far more uncertain, with no easy answers.”
Parliament must now rubber stamp the decision by the government’s Casino Advisory Panel before companies start bidding to develop and operate the Manchester casino and 16 smaller venues around the country.
Stephen Crow, who chaired the deciding panel, emphasised the importance of the casino fuelling growth in a run-down area. “Manchester… is an area in need of regeneration at least as much as any of the others we observed,” he said.
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