By ALEXANDRA BERZON And MELODIE WARNER

MGM Resorts International said Thursday that the Macau government granted the company's Chinese unit a lease to develop a luxury resort and casino in Macau's Cotai district, though the project still awaits official approval to begin construction.

MGM China Holdings Ltd. paid the government about $56 million as the initial payment for a land concession.

The resort, with a budget of $2.5 billion, is expected to be built on a 17.8-acre site and include roughly 1,600 hotel rooms, 500 gambling tables and 2,500 slot machines. Construction is expected to take up to three years.

Still, while the lease might indicate progress on the MGM's hotly anticipated new casino development, the deal won't be effective and construction won't begin until the contract is published in the Official Gazette of Macau. In the past that step came quickly, but there have been significant delays more recently. MGM rival Wynn Resorts Ltd. said in September of last year that it had formally accepted the terms of a land deal in Macau, but it didn't receive the official approval until this May.

MGM Chief Executive Jim Murren said after Wynn's May approval that he believed that the Macau government would approve the company's plan to build a Cotai casino. Drawings of the casino resort featured towers designed to look like stacks of patterned Chinese jewelry boxes.

MGM owns 51% of its Macau subsidiary, which developed the MGM Grand casino in Macau, which opened in 2007. The Macau venture is a partnership with Pansy Ho, the daughter of Stanley Ho, a Macau gambling mogul who once enjoyed a monopoly in the Chinese gambling enclave.

MGM, which is based in Las Vegas, gets a smaller portion of its revenue from Macau than do Wynn and Las Vegas Sands Corp. But MGM's presence in the enclave nonetheless has helped the company weather the downturn Las Vegas entered in 2008 and from which the industry still hasn't recovered.

MGM hasn't developed a new casino in the U.S. since CityCenter opened in Las Vegas in 2009, although the company is seeking approvals for a proposed project in Massachusetts and a joint venture in Maryland.

Cotai has become the new center of growth in booming Macau, the only place where gambling is legal in China. But after an initial burst of excitement, the government has slowed approval of new projects, making would-be builders such as MGM, Wynn and Mr. Ho's SJM Holdings Ltd. wait years for approval.

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