The Petersburg Campaign City Council’s Request for Proposal (RFP) stop that ended lastly month garnered quint responses from companies interested inward perchance partnering with the Old Dominion townspeople on a casino resort hotel development.
State lawmakers this yr voted to relocate the Richmond casino permit near 25 miles southward to Petersburg Campaign after residents inwards the majuscule twice voted against seemly a gambling casino destination. It’s likely that Petersburg Campaign will presently conjoin Norfolk, Portsmouth, Danville, and Bristol in being designated as a cassino legion past commonwealth lawmakers.
Gov. John Glenn Younkin (R) this calendar week returned statute law to characterize the economically downtrodden metropolis for a cassino to the General Assembly. The governor asked the House of Delegates and Senate to remove the reenactment clause that would require state lawmakers to vote once again on the Petersburg Campaign gambling casino identification before a local referendum on the affair could follow held.
Petersburg officials in February opened the casino RFP to gage interest. The metropolis received quintuplet responses, and several are across the country known casino developers and operators.
Handful of Replies
The Phoebe companies that completed the RFP include The Cordish Companies, Penn Entertainment, Bally’s Corporation, Benjamin Rush Street Gaming, and The Warrenton Group.
Penn Entertainment is based inward PA and is i of the nation’s largest regional cassino developers and operators. The companionship primarily operates below the Hollywood gambling casino brand.
Cordish is headquartered inward Baltimore and inwards 2022 pitched Petersburg a $1.4 one million million mixed-use development with an structured resort hotel casino. Cordish operates quartet Live!-branded casinos inwards Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Bally’s is based in Rhode Island and is developing a $1.1 1000000000000 casino in downtown Chicago. The accompany is amid financial struggles, however, and was recently dealt several course credit downgrades.
Rush Street Gaming is headquartered in Windy City and owns and operates Rivers Casino Portsmouth. The companionship also runs Rivers casinos inwards Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York.
Warrenton is a Washington, D.C.-based real acres firmly that says on its website it’s an “innovator” in underdeveloped “mixed-income and market-rate housing” and has highly-developed o'er $1 one thousand million inwards tangible estate. It has no more casino holdings.
Cordish the Favorite?
State lawmakers inwards 2021 and 2022 mulled allocating Petersburg a cassino license. During that time, Petersburg Campaign partnered with Cordish and the company pitched a $1.4 one million million labor that was to follow reinforced over several phases and years.
The Old Dominion General Assembly in the end folded on the Petersburg Campaign efforts during those legislative sessions. Petersburg Campaign faced critique for not holding a competitory tender for its possible cassino and seemingly striking a backroom sell with the Live! gambling casino operator.
City officials are taking a to a greater extent transparent go up this clip around. Cordish believes it relieve presents the topper chance for Petersburg, a metropolis with a blackamoor legal age population.
Cordish has teamed upwardly with NFL Hall of Famer Robert I Ian Smith to make water its case. Smith, a Norfolk native, played for the Buffalo Bills and President Washington Commanders during his storied 19-year career.
Smith, who ventured into real landed estate after his playing career ended inward 2003, says Petersburg Campaign officials need to cull a developer that has ties to Virginia.
“Outsourcing a projection of this magnitude to a visiting developer with no more ties or interest group in uplifting the community of interests testament make out little to set up the problem,” Kate Smith said in a liberate from Cordish. “Changing outcomes inwards historically disfranchised and underserved populations requires that we must be provided the opportunities to strengthen our communities from within.”