The 5 million expansion and upgrade of Pechanga Resort & Casino in California’s Riverside County is nearing completion, with a grand opening planned for December.
The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians last week released a video, “The Next Chapter,” with a digital rendering of the luxury hotel with 568 rooms and suites, a luxury spa, ballroom, meeting space, pool complex and two more restaurants, which will bring the total to 13. The number of hotel rooms will just about double, to 1,100. Joining a golf course, the additional rooms will add to the luster of which is considered to be the largest casino floor on the West Coast.
Pechanga also last week opened a new off-track betting area, with an opening that coincided with the first day of races at the Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego County.
The OTB was created from part of the casino’s poker room. It features rows of desks and walls of TVs that show various races during the day. It defies the typical betting stereotype in that no smoking is allowed in this poker room. Pechanga hopes that the poker room and OTB will feed of a mutual synergy.
In 2007 the state legislature authorized the addition of 12 “mini-satellite” OTBs.
