Posted on: October 16, 2024, 10:15h.
Final up to date on: October 16, 2024, 10:27h.
The Norfolk on line casino resort challenge from Boyd Gaming in partnership with Virginia’s Pamunkey Indian Tribe will break floor on the finish of the month.
Following the Norfolk City Council’s greenlighting of the greater than $500 million enterprise, the builders say they’ll break floor on the leisure vacation spot on Wednesday, October 30. The ceremonial first digging of grime might be attended by Boyd Gaming CEO Keith Smith, Pamunkey Chief Robert Grey, and Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander.
The yet-to-be-named Norfolk resort will embody a 200-room resort and a on line casino flooring with 1,500 slot machines, 50 stay seller desk video games, and a sportsbook. The blueprint’s newest revision options eight eating places and bars, 13K sq. ft of assembly and occasion house, a full-service spa, a health heart, and a 1,300-space parking storage.
The advanced might be constructed on roughly six acres that the builders will buy from town for $10 million.
Norfolk voters licensed a on line casino along the Elizabeth River adjoining to town’s Harbor Park Minor League Baseball stadium throughout the November 2020 election. The native referendum fielded 65% help.
Short-term On line casino
Boyd Gaming and the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, the latter Norfolk’s longtime gaming accomplice, will first open a short lived on line casino with a number of hundred slots and a handful of desk video games.
The builders should start on line casino playing on the location by November 2025. That’s as a result of Virginia’s 2020 business gaming invoice that qualified select cities to ask residents to authorize casinos mandates that gaming start the place local referendums discipline sufficient help inside 5 years of approval.
Boyd plans to assemble the momentary on line casino starting in February 2025 and open the power by mid-October. Development on the everlasting resort is to start in mid-January 2025 and be prepared someday in 2027.
Norfolk’s long-delayed on line casino is lastly being expedited upon Boyd’s arrival. In September, Boyd grew to become the Pamunkey’s growth accomplice after the Las Vegas-based regional gaming large purchased out billionaire Jon Yarbrough’s stake within the challenge.
Earlier than the 2020 gaming invoice handed within the state legislature, Yarbrough was partnered with the Pamunkeys on a tribal on line casino roughly 60 miles north of Norfolk on the tribe’s sovereign land in King William County.
Norfolk opted to accomplice with the tribe for its business on line casino to thwart competitors the tribal on line casino may need created. Norfolk voters ratified their on line casino alternative in November 2020, with the Pamunkeys and Yarbrough, working collectively as Golden Eagle Consulting II, LLC, designated as town’s most popular gaming developer.
The tribe and Yarbrough encountered quite a few challenges in getting their Norfolk on line casino scheme referred to as HeadWaters Resort & On line casino throughout the approval end line. Yarbrough, who amassed his riches by founding a number one producer of tribal gaming machines, in the end folded on the enterprise and sold his 80% stake in Golden Eagle to Boyd.
Identify Prospects
Upon Boyd’s arrival, the Norfolk gaming challenge’s longtime id, HeadWaters, was sunk. Boyd reps say they’ll quickly announce what the forthcoming property might be referred to as.
In contrast to its major competitor — Penn Leisure and its Hollywood on line casino model — Boyd doesn’t have a dominant model it makes use of for its regional properties. The one model Boyd makes use of in a number of states is Sam’s City in Nevada, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Sam’s City Virginia or Norfolk is unlikely, at greatest.
It’s likelier that Boyd and the Pamunkeys will choose a reputation that resonates with the Hampton Roads area, and presumably acknowledges Norfolk’s wealthy historical past, together with its huge waterways and Naval operations.
