Stadium Casino LLP, the consortium of Baltimore’s Cordish Company and Pennsylvania’s Greenwood Gaming that owns Philadelphia’s second casino license, announced that construction on the Live! Hotel and Casino in the city’s stadium district will begin next year with a projected opening in 2020.
According to a report in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the plan for building the $600 million casino property, which will be adjacent to a hotel created from a refurbished Holiday Inn, was fast-tracked after SugarHouse dropped its legal challenge to the license award. That challenge had been based on the ownership stake of Watche “Bob” Manoukian, majority owner of Greenwood’s Parx casino in Bensalem, in the new project.
The lawsuit, which claimed Manoukian’s ownership stake in Stadium Gaming violated the 2004 gaming law’s dual-casino ownership restriction, became moot when Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed a massive gaming expansion law that repealed the 2004 restriction.
The Live! Hotel and Casino will feature 200,000 square feet of total space, with 2,000 slot machines and 125 table games. The adjacent hotel will offer 200 rooms.
