Wind Creek Bethlehem is following through on the promise of its owner, Alabama’s Poarch Band of Creek Indians, to make substantial improvements to the former Sands Bethlehem, purchased earlier this year from Las Vegas Sands Corp.
In plans filed with the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Wind Creek detailed plans for a $90 million, 270-room hotel tower to be built next to the existing 282-room hotel and adjacent Wind Creek Event Center. According to the plans, the rooms would be on upper floors, and the ground floor would include a ballroom, meeting space, business center, banquet kitchen and bar. The second floor would include a pool and deck with patio tables. A state-of-the-art spa also would be included.
According to a report in the Allentown Morning Call, the casino plans to break ground in the spring on the new expansion. Construction would take approximately 14 months.
“We will work closely with Wind Creek to move this project forward,” Bethlehem Mayor Robert Donchez told the newspaper.
The project was previewed by Wind Creek, the gambling and hospitality arm of the Alabama tribe, when it closed on its $1.3 billion purchase of the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem on May 31, as part of what CEO Jay Dorris at the time called a plan to transform the casino into the “No. 1 resort destination in the Northeast.”
Included in that plan is a $250 million project to transform the historic No. 2 Machine Shop—part of the Bethlehem Steel plant that once occupied the space—into a 300,000-square-foot adventure and water park that also would include a roughly 400-room hotel.
