Terre Haute, Churchill Downs Officials Break Ground on $260M Indiana Casino Project

A daylight sestet years in the making eventually arrived for Terre Haute, Ind., on Tuesday. Community leaders gathered with representatives from Duke of Marlborough Downs Incorporated to celebrate the groundbreaking ceremony for the Queen of Terre Haute, a $260 million cassino holiday resort on the eastward position of town.

The mental synthesis externalize is expected to create 1,000 jobs and 500 full- and part-time cassino jobs. In all, the Queen of Terre Haute is expected to produce a $190 million economical wallop for the community.

Terre Haute Mayor Duke Floyd Bennett told Casino.org Tues that the biggest benefit testament follow what the urban center can make out with the money the gambling casino generates.

He said he would evidence opponents of the propose before that they ne'er needed to stair inside the casino and yet they’d ease do good from it. Voters inward the western sandwich IN county passed the 2019 referendum with 63.4% support.

We’re going to submit the money that the metropolis controls and it’s all going to be quality-of-life initiatives,” he said. “Paving, sidewalks, park improvements, you nominate it. It’s sledding to follow things that everybody can buoy enjoy that testament follow paid for with the revenues that come from the casino.”

The gambling casino and 125-room hotel are expected to opened past the remainder of next year, and when it does, it testament be the 13th licensed commercial-grade cassino inwards the state.

A Long ‘Journey’ for Terre Haute

For officials similar Floyd Bennett and commonwealth Sen. Jon Ford, R-Terre Haute, the road to receive to Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony was a stony one. That itinerary included a yoke of stops on the way.

“It’s been a journey,” Bennett said with a laugh.

In 2017, an Robert Indiana State Senate citizens committee deadlocked on statute law that would experience allowed Vigo County, a community of interests of 106,000, to go send on with a referendum. Two years later, though, language for the Terre Haute cassino was included inwards the expanded gaming banker's bill that also legalized sports betting.

Within a month of the referendum’s passage, the Indiana Gaming Commission was localize to awarding the license to a mathematical group led past Rod Ratcliff, a longtime Hoosier State gaming executive, and Greg Gibson, a Terre Haute man of affairs and community leader. Hard John Rock International planned to run the casino for the group.

However, inwards belatedly January 2020, the Robert Indiana Gaming Commission became aware of a federal investigating fastened to Ratcliff’s older gaming company. That led to a delay inwards the award, and when the IGC eventually did approve it inwards May 2020, Ratcliff was excluded from the project.

The externalise and so languished for more than a twelvemonth as Gibson’s team experienced problems with funding the throw and finding key personnel. That led to the commission taking the unprecedented step of not restorative the certify a year ago.

The IGC received iv proposals in conclusion fall before selecting First Duke of Marlborough Downs in a spirited, all-day public hearing that included presentations from all quadruplet groups. Still, the IGC required to locate an charm from Gibson by refunding him the $5 zillion licence fee for the cassino before it could really honor the Louisville-based company the license.

“It feels ripe to catch here,” Ford told Casino.org. “Really, it shows the resiliency of this community. We kept pushing, kept fighting for this, and hither we are, celebrating.”

Moving to Attract Indy Gamblers

The throw continued to undergo some changes even after Winston Churchill Downs’ proposition was selected. For one, it ab initio planned to establish the Queen of Terre Haute on the west position of the city. But metropolis and county officials persuaded them to feel another location finisher to the city’s growing E side.

Bennett said that exit turned Interstate 70 is easier to access code than the ane four miles west, where the initial proposal was to put the casino close the local mall.

It may live a small move, but local officials and Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill Downs also trust it testament facilitate encourage people on the west face of Indianapolis to drive to them sort of than to the II Caesars Entertainment racinos placed almost a half-hour east of the state’s largest city.

“At the stop of the 24-hour interval when you looking at at the gas mileage and the timing it takes to have from the due west side of Indy to the other capital of Indiana properties as compared to Terre Haute, it’s really negligible inwards terms of the duplicate space and time you get to get hold of to parkway to Terre Haute,” Queen of Terre Haute General Manager Mike Rich told Casino.org after the groundbreaking. “It just now depends if you need to fight back the (interstate) 465 traffic around the loop-the-loop or you require something that’ll live easier to get to at that point.”

Rich started with Churchill Downs this month. He comes from Caesars, where he worked for 20 years. Most recently, he served as the superior general manager for Caesars’ Robert Indiana Grand – now called Horseshoe capital of Indiana inward Shelbyville.