The Indiana Gaming Commission recently unanimously approved Tropicana Evansville’s request to move from its current riverboat docked along the Ohio River to a new million land-based facility between its existing hotels across the street. The new casino will be the first to be built under a state law enacted last year. Construction on the 75,000 square foot casino will begin this fall and be completed in 2017.
Tropicana General Manager John Chaszar said, “It’s a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful facility and it just changes everything we know about gaming in Southern Indiana. It puts us on par with a lot of the national casinos.” Chaszar added, “Our engineer estimates that we only had about 5 to 7 more years of life left in our boat, and so this was crucial to us.”
The move also will make a difference to the city of Evansville which will receive $25 million from Tropicana in future lease payments. Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke noted, “The revenue that the city gets from Tropicana means we’re able to buy police cars, fire trucks, things that we would otherwise have to squeeze the general fund for, so this is good for the city on many, many levels. Once it gets underway, you’ll have nearly $200 million in development projects in the downtown simultaneously. I don’t know if that’s ever happened in this city’s history.”
