MGM Mirage announced Tuesday the new resort will feature a casino with 300 gaming tables and 1,000 slot machines. It will include about 600 rooms, suites and villas.

``The resort will welcome guests with a dramatic atrium and offer the superlative hotel, entertainment, spa, dining, retail and convention facilities for which MGM Mirage is famous the world over,'' said Terry Lanni, the company's chairman and chief executive.

The MGM Grand is to open in 2007 behind the Wynn Macau resort and near the Hotel Lisboa and the Galaxy StarWorld casino hotel. MGM said the area ``is destined to become the casino `Strip' of Macau at the center of the Macau gaming industry,'' a swipe at the ambitions of rival Las Vegas Sands to recreate the Las Vegas Strip in another part of the city.

``We expect to jointly develop other projects in the Macau marketplace,'' Lanni added.

MGM Mirage will reserve 50,000 square feet around the resort for expansion. The joint venture will operate under a subconcession from Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM), the casino operator controlled by Ho's father, Stanley.

MGM did not disclose terms of the deal with SJM, but said the Macau government had granted its approval.

Pansy Ho is a director of SJM and managing director of Shun Tak Holdings. She and MGM had kept details of the project under wraps since announcing plans for the joint venture last summer.

MGM will invest US$280 million of its own cash in the project. Company officials have said they expect to seek a large bank loan for additional funding this month or next. The project is the second-most expensive yet announced in Macau, behind Las Vegas Sands' US$1.8 billion Venetian Macau casino resort. zach.coleman@singtaonewscorp.com