Later this month, the Cherokee Nation will break ground in Roland, Okla., on a new casino hotel a short distance west from Fort Smith on Interstate 40.
Cherokee National Entertainment said the new six-story, 120-room hotel will include a 170, 000-square-foot facility with 850 electronic games, table games and a private high-limit poker room. There will be convention space, and dining options will include a cafe and a Las Vegas-style buffet. There also will be an entertainment venue, according to a release Thursday.
A groundbreaking is scheduled for April 29.
Cherokee National Entertainment is the wholly owned gambling, hospitality, retail and tourism arm of the Cherokee Nation. It runs the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tulsa; seven Cherokee Casinos, including a horse-racing track; four hotels; two golf courses; and other retail outlets. It employs about 3,500 people across all of its operations.
Arkansas has no tribal-owned gambling, but betting is allowed on greyhound races at Southland Park in West Memphis and thoroughbred horse races at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs. State law allows gambling on electronic devices at the racetracks that are similar to devices offered at out-of-state casinos.
Five of Oklahoma’s Indian tribes, including the Cherokee Nation, have large-scale casino operations near the Arkansas state line. All of the facilities have been upgraded, adding new or expanded casino floors and nongambling amenities like hotels, restaurants and spas in recent years.
Near the new Cherokee project, across the state line from Fort Smith, the Choctaw Nation expanded and enhanced the gambling floor at its Pocola casino just off Interstate 540 in 2012 and added a hotel in 2013. Today, it has 2,200 slot games, a 12-table gambling pit and a high-limit area, and plans to add offtrack racing soon. The hotel has 118 rooms along with suites and luxury suites.
“The new casino hotel greatly changes the market there on the border near Fort Smith,” said Marc Anthony Fusaro, associate professor of economics at the College of Business at Arkansas Tech University at Russellville.
He said the Choctaw Casino Hotel will go from a veritable monopoly to a highly competitive market when the Cherokee facility opens.
“They’re going to be looking at the same limited customer base,” he said of the two casino/hotel operations. “It’s going to be ruthless.”
That could tip the odds in favor of casino customers, Fusaro suggested. He predicted that with a new player casino market in the Fort Smith area, prices on food, entertainment and hotel rooms will likely be reduced to attract business.
In a recent statement, Anna Lindsay, a spokesman for the Choctaw Casino Hotel in Pocola, said three-fourths of the casino’s customers and hotel guests come from Arkansas, and about half of its nearly 500 employees commute to work from Arkansas.
A request for comment from the Choctaw Nation concerning the new Cherokee Nation operation was not answered Thursday afternoon.
The Cherokee Nation hotel and casino in Roland, Okla., eventually will replace the tribe’s 50,000-square foot Roland operation. The existing casino has 600 electronic gambling machines, eight poker tables, seven table games and a diner, and employs a little over 300.
This will be the second Cherokee Nation casino hotel on the Arkansas border. In West Siloam Springs, the Cherokee Nation operates the Cherokee Casino, which was significantly upgraded in 2010. It has more than 1,500 electronic games, table games and a 140-room hotel.
Nationally, revenue at Indian-owned casinos rose 2 percent in 2012 to $28.1 billion, an all-time high. A recent industry report noted that growth in that segment has slowed compared with2011, which saw total revenue rise 3.4 percent. Indian casinos are now facing more competition from conventional and racetrack casinos, according to Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report released in late March.
Oklahoma came in seventh nationally in revenue growth among Indian casinos in 28 states, up 6.6 percent to $3.7 billion in 2012, but the growth rate declined slightly from 2011 when the state ranked fourth, with growth of 7.7 percent, the report said. The state ranked second by total revenue behind California, which took in $6.96 billion in 2012. Combined, the two states made up about 38 percent of all Indian gambling revenue in 2012.
Nongambling revenue at tribal casinos nationally was up nearly 3 percent to about $3.4 billion in 2012, the second consecutive year for growth. Oklahoma’s tribal casinos saw nongambling revenue rise to $510 million, a 3.4 percent increase when compared with 2011. Nongambling revenue for the state has grown since 2009.
Business, Pages 25 on 04/18/2014