Pennsylvania’s Mount Airy Casino Resort opened its new 20,000-square-foot concert venue last week with a concert by chart-topping performer Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers.
Mount Airy officials say the new ballroom/event center is the largest casino entertainment venue in northeastern Pennsylvania. It is part of a $40 million expansion project that added 100 hotel rooms and suits, and a 2,000-capacity, 26,000-square-foot covered outdoor concert pavilion.
Both new entertainment venues have distinguished the casino, located in Paradise Township in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains resort region, as a major entertainment draw. Top performers are already booked into the new indoor venue, and the outdoor venue will offer shows this year alone by prominent acts including Alanis Morrissette, The Struts and The Charlie Daniels Band.
“We’ll have a full complement of events,” says Rich Berkowitz, president of Stroudsburg’s Sherman Theater, in an interview with the Allentown Morning Call. The theater will book the new event center with AEG, the world’s second-largest concert promoter. “We want people to make it a weekend here at Mount Airy and the whole of the Poconos.”
Vincent Jordan, Mount Airy’s vice president of marketing and gaming operations, told the newspaper the concert venue, like the overall expansion, was in response to customer demand. “It was necessary,” he said. “It’s based on demand, and we’re running 98 percent occupancy in the hotel, and that’s been for quite some time. So we definitely need more hotel rooms.
“And then, of course, as we do events with these concerts and shows, customers tell us, ‘Hey, we need a place to stay. We need to stay and enjoy the event.’ This is a destination resort. People like to come and experience the entire resort.”
