La Villa Mediterranean (pictured) will not become Marseille’s first ever casino as Mayor Jean-Claude Gaudin has acknowledged that the venue lacks the space for a proper gambling floor, according to a report on G3 Newswire.

Large casino groups are looking to get into the casino action in the city located in southern France, which unlike many neighboring towns such as La Ciotat, Aix-en-Provence, and Cassis, does not yet have a casino. Mayor Gaudin was looking to introduce gaming to the futuristic building that has a huge cantilever roof jutting out 40 meters over an artificial basin in the Mediterranean. While the casino would have benefited from the traffic from the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilisations (MuCEM), which is adjacent to it, the space just wasn’t big enough for a viable casino operation.

Gaudin said, “I want to implement a casino worthy of the second city of France in Marseille. Villa Mediterranean, however, seems too small to accommodate a facility that meets our ambitions. I have asked the city services to search and determine, at their earliest convenience, in conjunction with Euroméditerranée, somewhere with a minimum space of 5,000 m2 where a facility can be built that will help increase the attractiveness of our city and to develop its economy,” according to the news agency.

This summer, France’s largest casino group, Partouche (PARP:FP), committed €2m to completely overhaul its Casino de Dieppe. Located on the waterfront in Dieppe, the casino is owned by the municipal council city and will be renewing Partouche’s license for another 10 years.