Will Kazakhstan Be The New Vegas?

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Apr 3rd 2006 at 5:00PM

It seems almost like a late April's Fool's Day joke but it's true, Kazak authorities are pondering a gambling and entertainment complex near the city of Almaty. The BBC reports that President Nursultan Nazarbayev has said that he had long thought of building a version of Las Vegas on a steppe outside the city. A desert gambling oasis may help control gambling inside the major cities. Almaty alone has nearly 40 casinos. Nazarbayev wants to shift that action to the shores of Lake Kapchegai around 50 miles away (Vegas with a beach). While the article references the rise of gambling in Asian countries it doesn't mention that another aspirant to the Vegas throne, the Cotai Strip in Macau which already has attracted major hotel and retail interest and has massive Vegas-style hotels under construction. Now if Steve Wynn shows up in Kazakhstan then we'll know it's really going somewhere.

Tags: asia, central asia, gambling, kazakhstan, las vegas, macao, macau