Operator News
Spain – Government initiates first infrastructure tender for BCN World
By Phil - 25 January 2017
The Government of Catalonia has launched the tender for the first contract for the leisure and entertainment complex casino formerly known as BCN World.
The contract is for road access plans to the new complex. Public company the Catalan Land Institute (Incasòl), which owns the land where the resort will be built, has tendered the studies to construct the accesses to the newly established Tourist and Recreation Complex (CRT) as the project in Vila-seca as Salou is now provisionally known.
The contact is worth €229,000 and the winning company has six months in which to draft the new plans. Interested companies may present their respective offers at the beginning of next month according to a notice put up by the Incasòl website.
The issue of access is complex and has caused some controversy as traffic is expected to be extremely heavy in the area due to the fact that amusement park PortAventura already attracts 4 million visitors and will soon expand further with the addition of Ferrari Land, which will open in April. The €100m addition will attract another million visitors to the park according to current estimates. The CRT complex will be situated on land near the park.
The Urban-Development Master Plan (PDU) for the Tourist and Recreation Complex was approved in December. Josep Rull Minister of Territory and Sustainability said that the new plan had been approved after a six month public consultation period and that a number of important changes had been made when it came to infrastructure as well as the protection of the environment. Work on the complex will begin in the summer of this year. The new project will be far less ambitious than envisaged and will house less casinos and hotels than previously announced. However, according to President of Catalonia Oriol Junqueras a total of €2.5bn will be invested in the project which will create 10 thousand jobs. Gaming space, however, will be reduced drastically to just four per cent of the total space of the new project.
However, the new complex will have a profound impact on the area. In December the government released an economic study which was compiled by the Universidad Rovila i Virgili de Tarragona (The public University of Tarragona). According to the report, additional tourists spend will stand at between €860 and €1.145bn per year. The complex could also create 12,000 direct jobs, and once it has been open for a year could lead to 1.7m to 2.1m overnight stays in the area of Campo de Tarragona – a 21 per cent increase over present figures. Between 3m to 5m visitors could visit the new complex a year.
