{"id":18997,"date":"2016-10-13T11:27:10","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T19:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=18997"},"modified":"2016-10-13T11:27:10","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T19:27:10","slug":"hollywood-jamul-opens-hutchinson-opposes-arkansas-casinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/hollywood-jamul-opens-hutchinson-opposes-arkansas-casinos\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Jamul opens; Hutchinson opposes Arkansas casinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the eyes of the industry were focused on the closing of Trump Taj Mahal<\/strong>, there was another long-awaited event on Monday: the opening of Hollywood Casino Jamul<\/strong>, near San \"Hollywood-Casino-Jamul\"Diego<\/strong>. Combine in-progress road construction with a new casino and you had an opening-prescription for gridlock. However, by Tuesday traffic was reported as being back to normal<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThis is pretty much nothing, compared to yesterday,\u201d a California Highway Patrol<\/strong> spokesman told The Times of San Diego<\/em>. Casino opponent and County Supervisor Dianne Jacob<\/strong> was guilty of the Bad Pun of the Week, when she chided Caltrans<\/strong> for the incomplete road work, saying,\u00a0\u201cI advise motorists to not gamble with their lives and stay away.\u201d\u00a0(Groan!<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Casino developer and manager Penn National Gaming<\/strong> opened Hollywood Jamul with 1,700 slots and 43 table games, plus a Tony Gwynn<\/strong>-branded restaurant that will now be a de facto<\/em> memorial to the beloved slugger. There’s still no sign of Penn being able to offload the $436 million construction cost onto another lender and the sudden return to business as usual in the Jamul area might not be a good sign of things to come.<\/p>\n

* Now that Pinnacle Entertainment<\/strong> is in place as manager of The Meadows Racetrack & Casino<\/strong> in Pennsylvania<\/strong>, it’s making no secret of the fact that it considers the property badly in need of an upgrade. (And if you doubt Pinnacle’s ability to deliver a crowd-pleasing product, the proof is in the numbers.) Meadows General Manager Rodney Centers<\/strong> says The Meadows could withstand improvement in loyalty program, restaurant lineup, table game repertory and in the age of its slots machines … in short, pretty much everything<\/a>. Pinnacle has already spent $2 million in slot updates atop the $138 million it paid for the casino license. It has 10 years to make its ROI pay off before its lease with Gaming & Leisure Properties<\/strong> expires. While Centers regards The Meadows’ slot inventory as out of date, he primary area of concern is its terrible standing in table game revenue — ahead only of puny ‘resort’ casinos Isle of Capri Nemacolin<\/strong> and Valley Forge<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

During its tenure as a Cannery Casino Resorts<\/strong> property, there was<\/em> a recent do-over of the food offerings, but Centers doesn’t feel the $3 million revision went far enough. He told a reporter,\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re looking at possibilities of sports bars or different venues with more focused menus, maybe some enhancements to the food court.\u201d He also didn’t foreclose the possibility of continuing host-community payments on a voluntary basis, saying, that it was ultimately the Legislature’s problem to solve but “I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll have ongoing conversations\u201d with the affected communities.<\/p>\n

* “This issue will most certainly have a negative impact on our communities, and it will no doubt create out-of-state monopolies. This is a bad deal for our state.” With those words \"asahutchinson\"Arkansas<\/strong> Gov. Asa Hutchinson<\/strong> (R) waved away an Economic Impact Group<\/strong> study that projected 3,400 short-term jobs, 3,200 long-term ones and $122 million tax revenue from three casinos, if approved in the coming election. The horsey set — which already has VLTs that offer “instant racing” — added its disapproval to Hutchinson’s<\/a>. Of the three casinos on the ballot, the Cherokee Nation<\/strong> is expected to manage the one in Washington County<\/strong> (encompassing Fayetteville<\/strong>), while the other two are up for grabs. The study assumes that two of the three casinos will be on the scale of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa<\/strong>, while the third would be much smaller. Huffed Protect Arkansas Values\/Stop Casinos Now<\/strong> Chairman Chuck Lange<\/strong>,\u00a0“This ‘study’ is political propaganda and not worth the paper it’s printed on,” perhaps before availing himself of some video gambling at the Hot Springs<\/strong> horse track.<\/p>\n

* Caesars Entertainment<\/strong> is awfully confident about skill-based slots, planning to install 271 GameCo<\/strong> machines at its Atlantic City<\/strong> casinos. (It will also incorporate Gamblit<\/strong> SKBs into Harrah’s Rincon<\/strong> and its Las Vegas Strip<\/strong> properties.) Here’s a preview<\/a> of what you can expect to say, if you play GameCo’s machines.<\/p>\n

* Tioga Downs<\/strong>‘ evolution into a full-scale casino continued as the first 63 of an anticipated 950 new slot machines were installed<\/a>. Owner Jeff Gural<\/strong> isn’t going to get the Meadowlands Racetrack<\/strong> he coveted, so the transformation of Tioga Downs will have to be a consolation prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the eyes of the industry were focused on the closing of Trump Taj Mahal, there was another long-awaited event on Monday: the opening of Hollywood Casino Jamul, near San Diego. Combine in-progress road construction with a new casino and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[179,23,34,73,18,26,190,7,67,85,101,115,69,95,30,33,111,31,8,9,100,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18997"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18999,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18997\/revisions\/18999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}