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The great real estate projects revitalize Madrid.

“We are not in the least worried”. This was the response yesterday of the mayor of Alcorcón, David Pérez, to the delay in the presentation of the business plan to carry out the large-scale leisure and hotel project Eurovegas.

Since the hotel and casino group Las Vegas Sands announced three months ago that its European project would be located in Alcorcón, southwest from the capital, the Administration, the owners of the terrain and companies from all sectors wait for news from Sheldon Adelson and his team.

It was planned that, at the beginning of May, Las Vegas Sands would present its business plan to the Madrilenian administration and the City Council of Alcorcón, which includes the development of more than seven million hectares and an investment of 17.000 million Euros. However the wait continues. “There has been an impasse this month that has slowed the project”, the major of Alcorcón confessed yesterday in a meeting organized by the Real Estate Agents Association of Madrid. “We have to understand that Las Vegas Sands is tying up loose ends, such as the legal aspects”, Pérez added.

“The initiative of Las Vegas Sands, backed by the Community of Madrid, is a great opportunity to reactivate the regional economy and, by extension, the national one, due to the dimension and the features announced in the project”, a spokesperson from the Association declared.

While awaiting the presentation of the document that will allow the Madrilenian community to announce the tender and start the building works “at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year”, Eurovegas is not the only big project that has been presented this year in Madrid. Canalejas has also been launched, a complex prepared by the group Villar Mir in the former headquarters of the Banco Santander in the Alcalá street and adjacent ones.

“The crisis bore new actors, new rules of the game and new segments of opportunities”, the organizers of the Real Estate Salon in Madrid (Sima) explain, an exhibition that takes place from the 30th May to the 2nd June and which will be complemented by professional conferences on the most important subjects of the real estate reality. “In these times, the announcement of new projects such as Eurovegas and Canalejas, with millionaire investments, is an injection of optimism for the whole economic activity”, the point out at Sima.

Only in the first phase of Eurovegas there will be an investment of 6700 million Euros, while the group Villar Mir will spend around 500 million Euros, 200 of which correspond to the acquisition from Santander of the seven buildings that form the Canalejas complex.

Villar Mir and Adelson are not the only ones interested in taking advantage of the available offer and the decrease in prices in order to invest in the Spanish real estate sector. “The growing consensus on the fact that the Spanish economy can start to grow again 2014 is increasing the interest in the real estate market”, they declare from the consulting company DTZ.

Many international funds are nearing the Spanish market to, for instance, analyze the properties in the hands of the public administration.

For example, the acquisition by Ziscal Investors of a part of the portfolio of the Internal Revenue Service of Catalonia put on sale by the regional government.

“The public administration has an evident need of restructuring its real estate patrimony. The consolidation of headquarters, the revision of rents, sale and lease back operations, sale of empty buildings, are common. The process has a huge reach and represents an opportunity for the real estate sector and is a device to attract investors, specially, when the assets are located in prime areas”, they explain from Sima.