Taubman Centers unveils luxury mall in Macau

The 920,000-square-foot (85,000 square meter) Mall at Studio City will boast about 140 stores from Gucci, Cartier, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and other brands in one of the biggest concentrations of high-end retailers outside New York and Paris, the company says.

Scheduled to open in 2011, the center is the showpiece of a $2.5 billion joint venture gambling resort project along the city's Cotai Strip.

Macau, the only place in China where casinos are legal, surpassed the Las Vegas Strip as the world's top gambling center in 2006. Now Tuabman and others are betting that the tiny former Portuguese colony, like Vegas, will become a shopping mecca.

Their sights are set largely on Chinese consumers. Already accounting for 18 percent of global luxury sales, Chinese are likely to exceed Americans and Europeans as the largest revenue group in just six years, said Morgan Parker, president of Taubman Asia Limited.

"Macau is the fastest growing retail market in Asia," Parker told reporters Wednesday. "Together with Hong Kong, Macau represents the very best access portal into China's growing appetite for luxury."

Others agree. Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. have set up major retail centers at the Wynn Macau and Venetian Macao in the last couple years. A Four Seasons' center opened last month sports many of the same tony brandnames.

What separates Taubman's project, Parker says, are scope and scale: dozens of flagship luxury stores offering a wider selection of merchandise in one central location.

He dismisses any worries about a retail glut, saying 40 million tourists were expected to pass through Macau by 2010. And whereas Vegas--among the world's most successful shopping destinations--has about 350 feet of retail space for each hotel room, Macau will have about 150 in the next couple years, he says.

"We're only really touching the tip of the iceberg," he said.