In advance of the Louisiana legislative session on April 12, Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, owner of the now-closed DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City, is launching an effort to move the license to St. Tammany Parish near Slidell City and develop a $250 million casino and a 250-room hotel. Moving the license was brought up three years ago in an unsuccessful effort to relocate the operation to Tangipahoa.
A local referendum would be required, like before, although support for the idea seems stronger now. The Slidell City Council will vote on the matter next month. The St. Tammany Parish council previously approved a resolution in support of legislation to hold a referendum on the matter. Parish voters would need to at least partially reverse their 1996 vote barring casinos and video poker. Parish Councilman Jake Airey said the resolution is non-binding but shows state legislators that local elected officials support the project.
The casino “is sort of a hot potato. The state legislative delegation wants the locals–I guess that’s what we’re called now–to tell them it’s okay to do it. My understanding is that they’d like that before the session starts,” Airey said.
But he wants more time for public input and for his constituents to attend informational meetings about the project. Airey said he doesn’t want people to feel that the referendum is a foregone conclusion. One reason is the chosen casino site is in a residential area, “probably the closest that a casino would be in Louisiana,” Airey said. In fact, the homes of some residents of Lakeshore Estates are located 350 feet from the site, he noted.
In a related matter, economic development officials are concerned about the fate of the buildings and grounds of DiamondJacks, which was shuttered due to Covid-19 last year.
