Despite having its attempt to build the $3.1 billion Resorts World Miami integrated casino resort continually thwarted, gaming giant Genting Group now reportedly looks set to be given permission to construct a 50-slip marina on a portion of the downtown Miami site.

According to a report from the Miami Today newspaper, the Malaysian firm via its Resorts World Miami LLC subsidiary has started negotiations with local officials after last month saw the Florida Department of Transportation return to the city the deed to a strip of submerged Biscayne Bay land adjacent to the plot for the proposed Resorts World Miami.

The newspaper reported that the state had originally obtained the bottomlands for the purposes of building the MacArthur Causeway, which crosses Biscayne Bay to connect Miami with the city of Miami Beach, but returned the real estate in December after determining that the land ‘is no longer needed for the continued maintenance’ of the thoroughfare.

“The city anticipates including a portion of the property in a submerged lands lease and is currently negotiating such lease with the adjacent riparian upland owner, Resorts World Miami LLC, [which] intends to develop and operate a marina that shall be located partly on submerged land currently owned by the city and partly on the property,” read a background memo from the city.

Miami Today reported that Genting Group spent $236 million in 2011 to purchase the 14-acre Miami waterfront site once home to the headquarters of the Miami Herald newspaper. It purportedly planned to subsequently use the land for its Resorts World Miami integrated casino resort complete with multiple hotel towers along with shops and a casino but has been continually frustrated by officials in Tallahassee. The site has remained unused except for the occasional tent-based exhibition such as the recent Art Miami show.

Kuala Lumpur-based Genting Group reportedly detailed in 2016 that it would like its proposed marina to be able to handle vessels of between 50 and 175 feet in length and would complement the facility by constructing a public walkway that would extend under the MacArthur Causeway to connect the site to the nearby Perez Art Museum Miami.