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What are odds Ohio racinos will add table games?
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Now that all 11 gaming facilities are open in the Buckeye State, what’s next for Ohio gaming?
The main question for patrons of the state’s seven racinos is when will table games come to those facilities. In fact, Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park, in the Cleveland suburb of Northfield, is making plans for a hotel on site and has two sets of plans.
“We’ve talked extensively about a hotel and will begin the planning of a hotel in 2015,” said Jon Lucas, president of Rocksino. “We had a small version, which would be without table games, and a larger version with table games, and that would obviously create additional jobs and tax dollars.”
Lucas further talked about table games during a phone interview recently after Hard Rock Rocksino celebrated being open for a full year. The facility, with harness racing and an array of restaurants and entertainment venues, opened in December 2013 and is a joint venture between Hard Rock International and Northfield Park Associates.
“I hope that the next step is that racinos get table games, and I certainly don’t have a crystal ball. ... The single biggest comment we get from our guests is why don’t we have table games, and obviously that’s because of legislation,” Lucas said. “It seems like the demand is there for that and would make a more level playing field. ... I also think bit would continue to grow the market because it would do the same as VLTs [video lottery terminals] in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in bringing business back [to Ohio].”
However, table games to the racinos would require a constitutional amendment. Issue 3 was approved statewide for the state’s four casinos in 2009, but rejected locally as area politicians, led by Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman Dave Betras, thought that Youngstown should have gotten a casino.
Three years later, the Legislature paved the way for the racinos to be run by the Ohio Lottery Commission. That has been challenged by the Ohio Roundtable and is still in the courts, currently in front of the Ohio Supreme Court, said Rob Walgate, vice president of the Ohio Roundtable.
“This governor and this administration has consistently shown that they will ignore the law and push the envelope as far as they can,” Walgate said of gaming in Ohio. “Why wouldn’t they just put [VLTs] in every bar, restaurant and bowling alley in the state?”
Walgate added that he has not heard talk at the state level about table games coming to the racinos. Scott Frost, marketing director for Hollywood Gaming at Mahoning Valley Race Course, talked about table games.
“As soon as we get any indication that something might change, of course we’ll start to plan on planning for that, but all of our efforts are 100 percent focused on the operation at hand,” he said. “That’s a definite consideration [in expansion] if table games at racinos are approved. Of course, then we would have to be a full-fledged casino and naturally would have to go before a state vote. We have enough property here to expand to that level, should it” happen.
Frost said Hollywood Gaming is looking at several options for current expansion, including tearing down a fake wall built on the gaming floor that would allow for more machines in the existing space.
They are “trying to weigh the costs and how long it’s going to take and what it will do to slow down business,” explained Frost.
But expansion plans are in the preliminary stage. “We don’t really have a consistent track record of history to look at right now. We had [our] opening. We just passed our softer season before the holiday. It’s just we don’t have a norm yet, so that might take a little bit longer to establish that and see where business levels are.”
Also expanding is Thistledown Racino in the Cleveland suburb of North Randall.
In an email statement, its parent company, Rock Ohio Caesars LLC chief executive officer Matt Cullen said, “We have invested nearly $90 million into Thistledown since we acquired the property several years back and have listened closely to the observations and recommendations of our guests and team members over the first 20 months of operations. The additional $70 million will be invested into a signature restaurant and bar, additional gaming space, new video lottery terminals and construction of a new parking garage.”
The investment into the facility comes after the facility decided to stay in Cuyahoga County instead of moving to the Akron-Canton area this past summer. Cullen further said that construction will begin “in the first quarter of 2015 and is expected to be completed by April 2016.”