DiamondJacks Casino Could Reopen After St. Tammany Parish Election
DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City, La., mightiness follow making a comeback.
DiamondJacks proprietor Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E), a Los Angeles-headquartered gaming and hospitality firm, was forced to temporarily shutter its Pelican State gambling casino in March of 2020 on province mandates inward ordering to combat the escalating COVID-19 pandemic. Just ii months later, P2E said it would not reopen the commercial message riverboat, the companion opting instead to assay and relocate its LA gaming license to a more attractive market.
Those efforts, however, were deemed unsuccessful during the Dec 11 local election inward St. Tammany Parish. P2E had proposed edifice a $325 1000000 gaming and leisure time terminus called Camellia Bay Resort in Slidell on Lake Pontchartrain.
Gambling is prohibited inward St. Tammany, which meant parish support by path of a local referendum was required to allow P2E to go forward with Camellia Bay. But parish voters rejected the casino during the delayed election held this past times weekend.
P2E claimed casinos on the Magnolia State Gulf Coast were responsible for the many “Vote CasiNO” signs that sprang up crosswise the parish inwards the years before the special election.
Gaming Board Requires Action
St. Tammany voters rejecting Peninsula Pacific’s evolution efforts inward the parish agency gaming must soon restart at DiamondJacks. If it doesn’t, P2E is at risk of infection of forfeiting its state-issued gaming permit.
The Louisiana Gaming Control Board (LGCB) in September passed a resolve that would experience allowed P2E to go its Bossier City gaming license to Slidell should St. Tammany voters welcome the development. But since locals rejected the motion, the LGCB ordinance compels that gaming recommences on board the DiamondJacks riverboat gaming vas — officially known as the The Virgin Margaret — “within 60 days of the election.”
That way DiamondJacks, or some other named gambling casino on the Blessed Virgin Margaret, must restart gaming operations on or before Feb 9, 2022.
Failure to foregather any deadline provided … or to well-timed(a) obtain an extension service from the Board may result inward forfeiture of all privileges to the license,” the LGCB resolution explains.
LGCB Chair Ronnie Jasper Johns says P2E cannot sell its gaming license. Currently, the troupe has only if two sound options: reopen DiamondJacks or a young casino on the Virgin Mary Margaret, or cede the gaming license.
“I look for they testament reopen DiamondJacks. The gameboard may commit them a minuscule to a greater extent time than the 60 days to capture endorse up and running,” Johns explained.
Reopening DiamondJacks won’t be an gentle task. P2E inwards Oct of 2020 held a blast sales agreement of the resort’s assets, including kitchen and eating house equipment, furnishings from the 560 hotel guestrooms, lighting fixtures, linens, water ice machines, and china.
DiamondJacks inward Rough Times
DiamondJacks Casino opened as Isle of Capri Bossier City in 1994. Developed and opened past Isle of Capris Casinos Inc., the Bossier City riverboat was sold inward 2006 to a local entity called Legends Gaming, which renamed it DiamondJacks.
Legends was unsuccessful as a gaming operator, and DiamondJacks racked upwardly to a greater extent than half of a billion dollars in debt. The fellowship entered bankruptcy in 2012, and various creditors took hold in of the gambling casino that year.
P2E acquired DiamondJacks inward 2016, but the rundown riverboat failed to compete with higher-end properties inwards Bossier. Isle of Capris Casinos Inc. was sold to Eldorado Resorts — the present-day Caesars Entertainment — inward 2017 for $1.7 billion.