The $440 million Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Sacramento at Fire Mountain is due to open October 30. The northern California gaming scene may never be the same again.
There is already plenty of competition in the gaming market north of California’s Bay Area. However, the joint project of Hard Rock, owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Estom Yumeka Maidu Tribe of the Enterprise Rancheria will kick that up a notch.
The new casino resort will open with 1,800 slot machines, 50 gaming tables and video poker on a 60,000 square foot gaming floor. Another 500 slots will be added by 2021.
The casino itself will have new high tech floor and service systems to speed up jackpot payouts, response times and beverage ordering.
The hotel will have 170 rooms with 31 suites. The resort will have six restaurants, retail shopping, meeting space and spa.
Casino President Mark Birtha told CDC Gaming Reports that the slots mix will include old and new games and popular themed games. Soon the casino will announce vendor partnerships that will lead to a lounge dedicated to premiering new themed games that will be linked to a progressive jackpot.
“We expect to have a good mix of titles everybody knows and loves with new titles that people are going to be really excited to come and play,” said Birtha.
Hard Rock expects to make table games a strong component for the casino and recently recruited Paul Mollo to be in charge of table games. Mollo comes to the resort from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tampa. He will be seeking to add new Asian games to cater to what is expected to a clientele that will have a high percentage of Asian players.
The new floor and service systems will enable players to fill jackpots and order beverages at their games, without having to wait for attendants, said Birtha. In a previous interview he had said, “The goal is to make all of this more user-friendly,” he said in an interview last month. “We have the resources to do this differently and do it in a way guests want. We’re excited to make it happen.”
The new entry into the market will be competing with the Harrah’s Northern California, owned by the Buena Vista Band of Me-Wuk Indians, which opened in April with 950 slot machines and 20 gaming tables. Plus the more established casinos in the region that includes Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln and Cache Creek Casino Resort in Brooks.
None have the scope of the new Hard Rock, according to casino consultant Ken Adams, a senior analyst for CDC Gaming Reports, who calls it “an entirely different competitor,” with larger corporate resources than its rivals.
It took a long time for the Enterprise Rancheria to bring this casino to a reality. They first applied to put land into trust in Yuba County in 2003. Eventually they broke ground on a smaller Class II casino called Fire Mountain Resort that was brought down by lawsuits from rival tribes who successfully argued that the land was too far removed from the tribe’s aboriginal homeland.
Eventually the lawsuits were settled, the governor negotiated a Class III gaming compact that enabled the tribe to move forward in partnership with Hard Rock.
