DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City Presents $200M Redevelopment Plans
The shuttered DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City, La., a COVID-19 casualty, is readying its comeback.
Mississippi riverboat operator Foundation Gaming inwards May acquired the shuttered Bossier City gambling casino from Peninsula Pacific Ocean Entertainment (P2E) for an undisclosed sum. Foundation owns and operates the Fitz Tunica Casino & Hotel and WaterView Casino & Hotel in Vicksburg.
P2E temporarily unsympathetic DiamondJacks on province orders amid the pandemic. But the fellowship opted to permanently shutter the riverboat after determining that Bossier City was no more yearner an attractive operating market.
After unsuccessfully seeking to relocate its Louisiana gaming certify to Slidell simply magnetic north of New Orleans, P2E was left with ternary options: reopen DiamondJacks in Bossier City, sell the dimension and gaming concession, or simply give up the operating permit.
P2E found Foundation, which claims to specialize inwards refurbishing hard put riverboats to break compete in crowded markets.
Revamp Plans
Louisiana Gaming Control Board (LGCB) Chair Ronnie Johns told the Shreveport Times this week that Foundation’s DiamondJacks overhaul plans could be approved as betimes as December.
Foundation has proposed investment $200 million to make for DiamondJacks ashore, as allowed through the state’s 2018 gaming law of nature permitting riverboats to go inland upwards to 1,200 feet from their archetype barges. The expend would final result inward an entirely unexampled cassino space. The send off budget also allows the stream hotel to be to the full renovated, including the property’s 560 guestrooms, get together spaces, and restaurants.
I’ve been very impressed with Foundation, and I experience very confident they will shoot unexampled life into the property, which is goodness for Shreveport-Bossier and for Louisiana,” Johns said.
Foundation plans to present its $200 trillion pattern during the LGCB’s Dec meeting. At that time, Jasper Johns says the plank will adjudicate whether to subscribe turned on the development.
If the room lends its approval, Foundation says building would begin in early 2023 with the anticipation of having the unexampled destination finished and ready for business inward the natural spring of 2024.
Johns Scolds P2E
Peninsula Pacific Ocean bought DiamondJacks inwards 2016 from a local mathematical group of investors owning and operating the riverboat under the entity Louisiana Riverboat Gaming Partnership. Jasper Johns doesn’t believe P2E ever had the true purport of making DiamondJacks profitable and assuring the casino’s futurity longevity.
Peninsula bought the attribute to tour to St. Tammany,” Johns opined.
It’s been many years since DiamondJacks was considered a briny player inwards the Shreveport-Bossier gaming market. During the 2019 fiscal year, DiamondJacks’ revenue gaming revenue totaled $35.2 meg — just a splinter of the more than $1.86 billion inward statewide gaming revenue generated that yr among the state’s 15 casinos.
Shreveport-Bossier is place to sextet casinos — Boomtown, Bally’s, Horseshoe, Sam’s Town, Margaritaville, and DiamondJacks. GGR inward the financial year 2019 for the local marketplace totaled more than $626.4 million, substance DiamondJacks controlled less than a 6% market place share.
Johns believes it was always P2E’s focussing to try and relocate the DiamondJacks gambling casino license near New Orleans. But voters inwards the St. Tammany Parish rejected a local referendum during a special election held in Dec finally yr seeking their approval to grant P2E to establish a $325 one thousand thousand casino resort hotel on Slidell’s Lakeshore Marina.