Macau is a 10 square-mile enclave with a population of 500,000 that last year
surpassed Las Vegas as the highest-grossing gaming region in the world. The
Playboy Mansion Macau will be 40,000 square feet in size, more than doubling
that of the Playboy Club opened last October at the Palms Resort in Vegas.
"Asia is a very important region for us," Playboy chief executive Christie
Hefner was quoted as saying in an Associated Press story. "Well-regulated
gaming, whether it's in Las Vegas or Macau, is a natural adjunct of the Playboy
lifestyle."
The mansion is being built as part of a $2 billion complex called Macau Studio
City that will occupy 3.7 million square feet and include casinos, shopping
malls, hotels and studios for the production of movies and TV shows. The
project is a joint venture by Hong Kong's eSun Holdings and partners including
the U.S.-based New Cotai LLC.
Hefner refuted suggestions that the new mansion would amplify Macau's image as
a place teeming with prostitution and other sordid activity.
"Whatever negative connotations that may have existed in the past around Macau
have long been supplanted by this rebirth," Hefner commented, making note of
the area's surge in revenue since the Chinese government ended a gambling
monopoly in the country in 2002, and allowed in Vegas casino brands including
the Wynn and the Venetian.
The Playboy Mansion Macau is slated to open in late 2009. Until the opening
last year of the Vegas location, Playboy Clubs had been defunct since 1991,
when the last existing one, in Manila, was shuttered.
