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Catoosa, Oklahoma (AP) 12-08
Cherokee Casino Resort in Catoosa is opening a 30,000-square-foot expansion, including 800 new electronic games and an 80-foot-long bar made of solid ice.
The December 15th opening is part of a $155 million expansion that will ultimately include more than 400,000 square feet of hotel, convention and entertainment space in a new 19-story tower.
The idea for the ice bar came from the Red Square restaurant inside Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
When the full expansion is completed this summer, the casino 15 miles east of Tulsa will adopt the Hard Rock name under a licensing agreement with Hard Rock Hotel Holdings LLC and HRHH IP LLC.
Dedicated suites will be offered on the 17th floor for major casino players.
There will be a 2,500-seat multi-purpose theater and events center and 30,000 square feet of convention space to augment the hotel, golf course and gambling areas.
Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill will open in 2009, as well as a steakhouse offering indoor and outdoor seating on the tower’s top floor. That dining room will feature 20-foot-high floor-to-ceiling glass walls.
Cherokee Nation Enterprises, which operates the Cherokee Casino chain, employs more than 3,300 people in northeastern Oklahoma. Chief Executive David Stewart expects this expansion to increase that by several hundred positions.
Other tribal gaming operations in Oklahoma have been growing as well.
The Chickasaw Nation runs the WinStar World Casino, located in Thackerville near the Texas border. The operation, which began in the early 1990s as a bingo parlor, grew to a 183,000 square-foot facility.
With its current expansion, the casino will balloon to 519,000 square feet – the bulk of it gaming space.
Tribal gambling in Oklahoma generated nearly $2.5 billion in revenue last year. The figure ranks the state behind only California and Connecticut, according to the Casino City’s Indian Gaming Industry Report, released in August.
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