Vol. 8 • No. 2 • January 18, 2010 - Print This Issue
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Vol. 8 • No. 2 • January 18, 2010, PEOPLE
Townsend's Future with Pinnacle Uncertain
Kim Townsend (l.), the CEO of Pinnacle Atlantic City, was reportedly headed for Lumiere Place in St. Louis. With that plan shelved and Atlantic City on “indefinite hold,” Townsend's fate is unclear.
Pinnacle Entertainment CEO Kim Townsend, once based in Atlantic City, will not become general manager of the company's Lumiere Place casino in St. Louis, as previously reported. As of last week, no further information was available about her status within the gaming company.
In 2007, Townsend was named CEO of Pinnacle's Atlantic City operations. In October of that year, the company imploded the old Sands Casino Hotel to make way for a new $1.5 billion megaresort. But the recession and plummeting casino revenues in Atlantic City have put an end to that project, at least for now.
In October 2009, Pinnacle announced that Townsend would relocate to St. Louis to run Lumiere Place, adding that she would continue to oversee the Atlantic City project from her new office.
According to the Atlantic City Press, Townsend was a close ally of former Pinnacle chairman Dan Lee, chief architect of the Atlantic City casino project. Lee resigned in November after allegedly threatening a St. Louis official over a zoning dispute.
A Pinnacle spokeswoman confirmed that Townsend won't be taking the St. Louis job, but refused to comment further. "We're in the process of evaluating all of our Atlantic City assets. We'll discuss any further updates once we've completed that process," Pauline Yoshihashi said in a statement.
