Coast Casinos making rebound

The head of the Mississippi Gaming Commission expects gaming tax revenue for the Gulf Coast to be at pre-Hurricane Katrina levels by the end of the year.

Larry Gregory, executive director of the commission, disagreed with Carlton L. Greer, senior vice president of Las Vegas-based Global Gaming, who told an audience at the 13th annual Southern Gaming Summit that he expects it will take until 2008 before gaming tax revenue for the Coast returns to pre-Katrina amounts.

“I think he was way off with his figures,” Gregory said.

Gaming tax revenue for the Coast amounted to $1.3 billion annually before Katrina shut down the 12 casinos operating there.

Last month, gaming tax revenue amounted to $64 million – and that’s with just three casinos open on the Coast.

Gregory expects six more casinos could reopen on the Gulf Coast by the end of the year.

Gaming tax revenue for the Coast should exceed what it was before Katrina by the end of 2007, Gregory said.

“I think by the end of 2007 it will be at $1.8 billion,” he said.

Greer based his comments on a post-Katrina market analysis that concluded Gulf Coast gaming revenue would be constricted because of a lack of casinos, lack of hotel rooms and closure of the Bay St. Louis and Point Cadet bridges.

Private investment will drive Biloxi’s rebuilding, Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway told the audience of gaming industry executives, state officials and others.

He said casino hotel rooms are important because they drive the gaming revenue figures.

Holloway said the opening of the 1,800-room Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in March 1999 sparked a 35 percent increase in gross gaming revenues at Biloxi casinos that year, and the continued growth of hotel rooms after that accounted for an 18-percent gaming revenues increase during the past five years.

Holloway said seven casino resorts should be open in Biloxi by the end of the year.

Joining IP, the Isle of Capri and Palace Casino Resort that are already open will be Beau Rivage, which has announced an Aug. 29 reopening; Grand Casino, which Harrah’s Entertainment plans to open in its Bayview hotel; Boomtown; and Treasure Bay.

Just days after Katrina hit, gaming executives said they wanted to rebuild along the Gulf Coast as long as they could do so on land and had assurance the gaming industry wouldn’t have its tax rate raised, said Jerry St. P�, chairman of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

Steve Richer, executive director of the Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the goal is for the Gulf Coast to be a Tier 1 pleasure destination with gaming.

That would require 30,000 hotel rooms, 600,000 square feet of convention space, an airport and a variety of ways for visitors to entertain themselves from golf courses to spas, he said.

For more businesses to move forward, state and local governments need to make additional decisions that concern rebuilding of roads on the Coast, said Bernie Burkholder, owner of Treasure Bay.

“If Highway 90 is going to remain a four-lane highway, businesses need to know that,” he said.

A uniform building code is needed, and so is more affordable housing, so more workers can return to live and work, he said.

Burkholder encouraged gaming executives to support minority-owned businesses.

Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson, also encouraged support of minority-owned businesses by the gaming industry. This is something which the industry has done in the past, but he said he is afraid it could be overlooked in the rush to rebuild.

“It makes good business sense and promotes a healthy economy,” he said.

Source: AP 

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