In Louisiana, Queen Casino & Entertainment officials said the company will speed up plans to move its Belle of Baton Rouge riverboat casino onto land based on the success of its expanded, rebranded Queen Baton Rouge which moved onto land last August.
Queen President and Chief Executive Officer Terry Downey said the Belle’s 250-room hotel will reopen in the first quarter of 2025 and the land-based casino will open in the second quarter in the Belle’s 50,000-square-foot atrium.
Downey said the company plans to invest in excess of $200 million in the downtown Baton Rouge casino market, with the move of the Queen onto land and construction going on at the Belle. Although Queen Casino & Entertainment will own two Baton Rouge properties, Downey said the company is confident that the market can support both.
The Belle casino will offer 750 slots and 24 table games plus a sportsbook, Downey said. He added the expanded Belle will add 140 employees to the current staff of 460. Also, the property will be rebranded.
According to the Advocate, Downey said, “If we’ve learned nothing else since we’ve been here, people are super passionate about Catfish Town. We want to pay homage to the history of Catfish Town.”
According to Louisiana Gaming Control Board data, the Queen, formerly Hollywood Casino Baton Rouge, posted $7.9 million in winnings in April, up 67.8 percent compared to Hollywood’s winnings in April 2019. The Queen now has a 34 percent share of the Baton Rouge market; Hollywood had a 23 percent market share in April 2019.
Altogether, the three Baton Rouge casinos posted $23.1 million in winnings in April, up 13 percent from 2019; revenue to the state dropped 3.6 percent from April 2019 to $138.3 million. State revenue figures were adjusted to reflect one less casino in operation now, since DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City closed during the pandemic. Baton Rouge was the only Louisiana casino market to show increased revenue compared to five years ago.
Downey said the increased business at the Queen is what the company expected. The land-based Queen is more modern, with slots and table games covering a single floor instead of a triple-deck riverboat, plus guests can park closer to the casino floor.
“We’ve had kind of a quantum leap and part of it was we made a concerted effort to keep the players that we had, but we’ve really, really grown the market. It is thrilling to know that we’re just not cannibalizing, that we’re growing the market. We’ve really given a much more viable downtown option for people to game. I think we’ve reactivated gamers from eight, 10 years ago,” Downey told the Advocate.
Meanwhile, the Treasure Chest’s new $100 million land-based casino in Kenner will hold a grand opening on June 6. A “last bets ceremony” will take place at 11:59 p.m. on June 1. The casino opened in 1994 in a replica riverboat on Lake Pontchartrain, with one restaurant.
Owned by Boyd Gaming Corporation, the new facility will feature a 48,000-square-foot gambling hall, double the size of its current casino floor, plus more than 8,000 square feet of convention space and four new restaurants.
