Huge casino plan for White City

GAMBLING is set to take centre stage at the new £2bn shopping and leisure complex at White City in west London.

Property developer Chelsfield, which is redeveloping the site, is hoping to take advantage of the proposed deregulation of the UK‘s gambling laws to build the giant Las Vegas-style casino at White City.

Other tourist resorts in the UK, including Blackpool, hope to have huge casino style operations in due course.

The Millennium Dome is another site that could figure on the Government‘s list to be allowed a similar development.

Business tycoon Sol Kerzner, who made his name with the apartheid-era Sun City resort in South Africa, said recently that he will spend about £600m on developing a casino at the Dome along with two others in Manchester and Glasgow.

The Government‘s planned reforms of gambling laws will allow slot machines with unlimited prizes at ?resort-style‘ casinos by 2006.

An agreement to build the 600-bed hotel and casino at the Dome has already been signed with American billionaire Philip Anschutz, who plans to create a worldclass sports and music arena at the Dome site.

The latest plan could be the final piece of the jigsaw in the troubled history of the Millennium Dome, which closed to the public nearly four years ago.

On top of the original £800m price tag, taxpayers will have stumped up another £33m in fees and maintenance charges by 2007.

The regeneration of the Dome site on the Greenwich peninsula, costing £5bn in total, will also include shops, offices and 10,000 new homes.

If it gets off the ground it will be a key element in the regeneration of a huge tract of the 'Thames gateway'.

The redevelopment of the peninsula is being made easier by the absence of stiff planning restrictions on the use of the former industrial site.

The casino resort is expected to feature the full range of roulette tables, black jack tables, poker and craps games and waitress service at the tables. Mr Kerzner's Atlantis casino boasts 78 games tables and more than 900 slot machines and the Dome is expected to follow suit. Like the Atlantis it could also be the venue for tournaments offering big prize-money to the elite of international gamblers.

The decision to allow a gambling resort is the most controversial element of the development, not least because of the involvement of Mr Kerzner.

After making his fortune with the notorious Sun City resort, the 69-year-old entrepreneur left South Africa amid allegations of bribery.

In the last 15 years he has become one of the biggest casino operators in the United States.

His 2,300-bed Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas includes a seven acre man-made lagoon and a marine park that includes sharks, turtles and stingrays. The other main partner in the Dome deal is a company controlled by Mr Anschutz, a secretive American billionaire whose fortune is built on telecommunications, oil and entertainment.