Churchill Downs lost its bid to establish a casino resort in Richmond during yesterday’s election.
Richmond voters rejected the $562 billion externalize Winston S. Churchill pitched with media conglomerate Urban One past a 58-42% tally. Divisive messaging from Urban One founder Cathy Edward James Hughes likely didn’t do the propose any favors, as whiter, to a greater extent affluent communities intemperately voted against the Richmond Grand Resort & Casino.
Despite Winston S. Churchill Downs and Urban One disbursal to a greater extent than $10 one thousand thousand on the casino campaign, voters inward the Old Dominion cap for a secondly clip inwards III years refused the city council and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s asking to pass a Las Vegas-style gambling casino resort.
Not all is missed for Churchill, however, as the troupe is stock-still moving frontwards with a gaming resort inward Dumfries.
The Rose Progresses
Churchill Downs obtained the Richmond gambling casino evolution opportunity when it lowest year acquired to the highest degree of Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E) for $2.5 billion. Peninsula Pacific Ocean had partnered with Urban One on its failed 2021 Richmond casino referendum.
Churchill’s takeover of P2E was more focussed on getting Peninsula Pacific’s historical horse racing (HHR) trading operations in Virginia. Operating under the Rosie’s Gaming Emporium brand, Churchill’s purchase of P2E included sevener HHR gaming locations in the commonwealth.
Churchill is followers through and through with P2E’s be after to establish an HHR holiday resort inward Dumfries along Interstate 95. The resort hotel is existence built neighboring(a) to a 79-acre landfill that is being converted into a public park.
The Rose Gaming Resort, as the cast is called, is a $372 billion investment that testament feature a 305-room sumptuousness hotel, 15,000 straight feet of formula space, a 1,500-seat theater, and a 50,000-square-foot cassino with 1,100 HHR machines. Virginia legalized HHR gaming inward 2018 to save its gymnastic horse racing manufacture and the Colonial Downs Racetrack.
HHR games seem the like expansion slot machines but differ inward how they see romp outcomes. The terminals are parimutuel in nature and derive outcomes based on antecedently ravel horse races. Players typically pick an auto-bet feature article that gives them the Equus caballus with the topper odds.
Players wagered more than $4 1000000000000 on HHR machines inwards Old Dominion State lowest year.
Churchill Down’s ownership of the scoop rights to HHR games inwards Old Dominion State gained note value lowest month when the state’s Supreme Court ruled that science games are illegal. The controversial machines differ from a traditional slot inward that a gambol must place a winning payline. Law enforcement has been cleared to seize the machines that bear on to smother restaurants and bars, convenience stores, and gaseous state stations.
Regional Monopoly
With Richmond voters again rejecting a casino, the odds come out strong that the capital city testament remain release of a Las Vegas-style resort for the foreseeable future. Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill was localise to operate the capital of Virginia Grand and portion out inward its revenue, but the referendum disaffirmation plays into The Rose’s hand, as the HHR resort hotel testament possess a regional gaming monopoly.
Virginia’s 2020 commercial gaming banknote authorised casinos inwards only if pentad cities, with voters in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Bristol, and Danville signing turned on their proposed cassino projects.
The Rose testament be the closest gaming installation serving Northern Virginia, which is ane of the wealthiest regions inwards the US. MGM National Harbor inwards Maryland’s Oxon James Jerome Hill does target area Northern Virginia, but The Rose testament yield many players inward the realm a closer, to a greater extent convenient choice than traveling northeastward across the Potomac inward the to a great extent congested DC metro.