{"id":7770,"date":"2014-08-01T17:57:34","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T17:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2014\/08\/01\/billionaire-packer-linked-to-key-strip-parcel\/"},"modified":"2014-08-01T17:57:34","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T17:57:34","slug":"billionaire-packer-linked-to-key-strip-parcel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/2014\/08\/01\/billionaire-packer-linked-to-key-strip-parcel\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire Packer linked to key Strip parcel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- Original Post Content --><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i62.tinypic.com\/25ryy6q.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n\t<span style=\"font-size: 185px\">James Packer, Executive Chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and Australia&#8217;s richest person, answers questions following his speech at the Astra Conference on subscription television in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, March 15, 2007. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>\tBy HOWARD STUTZ<br \/>\n\tLAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL<br \/>\n\tThe long dormant site that once housed the New Frontier and was subject of the Strip\u2019s most expensive real estate could become active once again.<\/p>\n<p>\tBloomberg News Service reported Thursday that Australian billionaire James Packer had acquired a portion of the loan covering the 34.5-acre site and would consider building a hotel-casino on the land.<\/p>\n<p>\tGaming sources declined comment on the potential project.<\/p>\n<p>\tUnion Gaming Group analyst Robert Shore told investors in a research note Thursday that \u201cdiscussions, proposals, and even speculation around large-scale projects speak to ongoing and increasing interest in Las Vegas assets.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\tPacker is majority owner of casino operator Crown Resorts in Australia and jointly owns Melco Crown Entertainment, a Hong Kong company that has casinos in Macau.<\/p>\n<p>\tIn April, his name surfaced as a potential buyer of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. The property was sold a month later to a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group, a multinational private equity investment firm, for $1.73 billion in an all-cash transaction.<\/p>\n<p>\tAccording to Bloomberg, Packer bought a piece of a loan backed by the empty Strip property and is negotiating a potential deal with other creditors including Oaktree Capital Group.<\/p>\n<p>\tTwo Israeli companies bought the New Frontier and the land across from Wynn Las Vegas for $1.2 billion \u2014 roughly $24.8 million an acre \u2014 in 2007. The aging hotel-casino was demolished.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe companies planned to build a $5 billion hotel-casino based on the Plaza Hotel in New York City, but the recession killed the project.<\/p>\n<p>\tOaktree, the world\u2019s biggest distressed debt investor, now owns more than half of the abandoned project\u2019s loans after buying the debt at a discount of as much as 50 percent, Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n<p>\tAlyssa Linn, a outside spokeswoman for Oaktree, said in an email to the Review-Journal the company \u201cis declining to comment on this report.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\tPacker \u2014 who has a net worth of $6.5 billion \u2014 is listed at No. 212 on the Forbes List of World Billionaires and is the No. 2 richest person in Australia. He has flirted with Las Vegas in past.<\/p>\n<p>\tIn 2009, Crown terminated a deal to purchase Cannery Casino Resorts for $1.8 billion and was forced to pay a breakup fee and other penalties totaling $320 million.<\/p>\n<p>\tIn 2007, the company ended plans for Crown Las Vegas, which was to be built on the Strip between the Sahara and Riviera. The Federal Aviation Administration rejected plans for a hotel tower of 1,888 feet, which would have been the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n<p>\tShore said the investment community is again looking at the Strip\u2019s northern land parcels because of recent activity in the surrounding area.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe $415 million SLS Las Vegas \u2014 a redevelopment of the former Sahara \u2014 opens Aug. 23. MGM Resorts International announced plans to develop a 33-acre permanent open-air concert venue across from SLS Las Vegas.<\/p>\n<p>\tMeanwhile, Malaysia-based Genting Berhad is expected to begin construction this year on the $4 billion Resorts World Las Vegas on the former Echelon site, which located next to the New Frontier parcel.<\/p>\n<p>\t\u201c(Packer) lends credence to the Strip recovery story, and has fueled the positive news flow centered on the North Strip in the recent months,\u201d Shore said.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<h3>Replies:<\/h3>\n<p>No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Packer, Executive Chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and Australia&#8217;s richest person, answers questions following his speech at the Astra Conference on subscription television in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, March 15, 2007. By HOWARD STUTZ LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL The&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}