Nebraska Racetrack Erecting Temporary Casino
A temporary gambling casino testament commence construction at Grand Island, Neb.’s Fonner Park on Sept. 7, 2022. Expected to open up around Thanksgiving Day 2022 with 300 expansion slot machines and unrecorded tabularise games, it will control for at least II years as the lasting Grand Island Casino Resort gets reinforced nearby.
Since the track is also rest home to the Nebraska State Fair, expression on the temporary casino needful to waiting until after the fair concludes on Sept. 5.
The temporary cassino testament be housed inwards the racetrack’s confluence area, which testament follow demolished inwards preparation.
“All along, we said we’re non going to just now open up up some metal shed and flip in some slots and phone it done,” Fonner Park CEO Chris Kotulak told the Grand Island Noon Rotary Club, as reported past the Omaha World-Herald. “We want people to feature as well(p) a customer experience as they canful without the net result.”
Grand Idea
The lasting Grand Island Casino will follow reinforced starting after 2023 res publica fair. Its 37,000 square up pes gaming base will self-praise 650 slot machines and 20 tabularize games, a sports book, 4 restaurants, a show waiting area and sports bar. The plans also include building a 116-room, five-story hotel o'er the casino, northerly of an existing clubhouse.
Upon the Grand Island’s expected opening, sometime in 2025, it testament cater a unlined connectedness to the existing raceway grandstand, according to the project’s website, spell also providing great views to the say fair grounds on the W and the horse races on the east.
Fonner Park has contracted with Elite Casino Resorts, which runs troika IA casinos, to operate both the temporary and lasting casinos.
“In the lowest twosome of months, it’s turn more of a realism that this is going to happen,” Kotulak said. “There were a lot of uncertainties with the lawmaking that we needed to aid shore up this new industry inwards our state. It took quite an a flake of help.”
Nebraska voters legalized commercial casino play through a ballot referendum during the 2020 election. The outcome allows the state’s 6 Equus caballus racetracks to turn full-scale casinos with slot machines, tabular array games, and sports betting.
More Hay For the Horses
With the cassino revenue, Fonner Mungo Park should be able-bodied to encouragement purses for its races and to boniface more horses, according to the World-Herald report. Its 1,000-capacity facility has averaged nearly 750 horses in recent years.
Asked if the cassino will “help or hurt” pari-mutuel wagering at the track, Kotulak admitted they make budgeted to “take a hit” with the slot machines.
“We don’t live exactly how that’s sledding to feel, because what we’ll lose come out of our mutuel handle, with the deal we made with Elite, that’s going to aid us with our revenue,” he said. “So we’ll live able-bodied to assign that backwards into purse money, and if we make greater wrinkle money, we’re going to feature more horses and fuller fields.”