Tulsa Casino's update
Tulsa casinos become high rollers with expansions, grand openings
by Kirby Lee Davis
The Journal Record April 1, 2009
TULSA – Tuesday proved a great bragging-rights day for Tulsa casinos.
Construction at the Cherokee Casino Resort’s convention and meeting space located in Catoosa is nearly complete. (Photo by Rip Stell)
Although its expanded convention space will not open for a month, Cherokee Casino Resort officials said those projects have almost doubled advance room bookings for its soon-to-open, 19-story Hard Rock Hotel.Across town from that Catoosa resort, the $195 million River Spirit Casino opened its doors Tuesday along the banks of the Arkansas River as the new gaming flagship of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
These multimillion-dollar projects reflect resurgent business in Tulsa’s gaming community, overcoming a winter dip shadowing the national recession.
“We enjoyed a record January,” said David Stewart, chief executive of Cherokee Nation Enterprises, which oversees the Cherokee Casinos chain. That activity continued through February and March, with year-to-date revenues up 5 percent from 2008.
“We were pleased to see Tulsa’s economy reviving very quickly,” said Stewart.
With more than 300,000 square feet of sparkling new gaming space raised to the south of the tribe’s former centerpiece, the now-closed Creek Nation Casino at 81st and Riverside, River Spirit instantly became one of the state’s largest gambling facilities.
Besides its 2,750 gaming machines, 24 table games and 15 poker tables, River Spirit’s 1,300 employees staff five restaurants and bars as well as the live entertainment High Roller Lounge.
Marketing Director Jennifer Cross has projected thousands will visit the sleek new facility in its debut week.
“Isn’t it great what the Creeks have done?” said Stewart.
It spoke well for the Cherokees, and the Tulsa gaming industry, that on a Tuesday afternoon, during a competitor’s high-profile debut, the Catoosa resort could boast several acres of parking lots filled with consumer traffic. And that was beyond the lots filled by the resort’s 1,700-member staff or the contractors completing its $150 million expansion.
Having already opened their expanded gaming space in December, raising their game count to 2,300, in early May the Cherokees will unveil 23,000 square feet of convention space, which will lift the complex to just over 30,000 square feet, with a ballroom that can seat up to 1,000 banquet guests.
To support that, the Cherokees will open five floors of hotel rooms in the 19-floor tower in advance of the Hard Rock’s July grand opening.
Stewart credited the convention space with the resort’s 84-percent rise in advance room bookings for May through December, many of those the higher-rate Hard Rock VIP rooms.
Once the resort starts advertising the changeover following a June soft opening, Stewart expects that brand to bring a second jump in bookings.
“Before we were a conference center,” he said. “Now we’re a convention center.”
Stacy McKee-Redden, director of sales for Cherokee, said the center has gone from averaging groups of 50 people to booking groups of 200 to 400.
“Our resort offerings and convention center are what really set us apart in the Tulsa market,” said Stewart, calling the Catoosa complex the Tulsa area’s only resort-gaming destination. “In May, we already have reservations by groups ranging from insurance companies to government entities to wedding receptions.”
That advantage, with the global appeal of the Hard Rock brand and $2 million in music memorabilia, naturally boosts the resort’s attraction to out-of-state business. Stewart projects that segment could double its existing 20-percent-plus share of overall revenue once the final element, a 2,500-seat entertainment theater, opens early next year.
Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill also will open around July or August.
The convention center already has attracted advance customers not just from neighboring states like Missouri and Arkansas, but from California to Washington, D.C., to Minnesota and Canada.
“This trend is very promising,” said Stewart, who foresees the resort adding 200 employees with the hotel and convention center. “Tulsa is a great market to be invested in right now, and the business that we’re generating is proof of that.”
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