One of Iowa’s Last Three Riverboat Casinos Moving Ashore
The identification number of IA casinos that plasterer's float testament shortly drop past 33.3%. The Casino Queen Jacques Marquette was granted permission lastly hebdomad by the IA Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC) to move its 17K square-foot gaming flooring – including more than 400 slot machines and numerous tabularise games – ashore inward Marquette, Ia.
This testament provide only if II Iowa riverboat casinos – the Lakeside Hotel & Casino on Dame Rebecca West Lake inward Osceola, and the cassino at Ameristar Hotel inward Council Bluffs – where more than a dozen erst flourished.
As division of its move, The Queen Casino & Entertainment – the St. Louis-based company that acquired the riverboat casino in 2017 – has sworn to pass $12M adding 12K lame feet to its current dockside building. When it reopens, the land-based Casino Queen Jacques Marquette will include a unexampled sportsbook, new entrance, and a young eating house that testament connect with its current push forward area.
“Iowa was the world-class state to agnise riverboat casino gambling, and we be after to laurels that chronicle past continuing to bring home the bacon best-in-class gaming and entertainment at Casino Queen Marquette,” Dame Ellen Terry Downey, chairman and CEO of The Queen Casino & Entertainment told local reporters at a Jan. 26 IRGC hearing.
Iowa’s Ebbing Riverboat Tide
The first effectual play in Ioway were the pari-mutuel wagers allowed at dog and horse domestic dog tracks inward 1983. In 1989, the Ioway Legislature sanctioned riverboat gambling. The Diamond noblewoman inwards Bettendorf, Ia., the President inwards Davenport, Ia., and the Casino Belle inwards Dubuque, Ia. all launched on the same day – Apr 1, 1991. But the Diamond noblewoman made account because it was first turned the dock.
Three one thousand people seamed the loading dock in Bettendorf, Ia., to look out game-show hostess Vanna Stanford White christen the Diamond Lady. They jockeyed for blank space on quartet excursions she took that day. Over half a gazillion boarded the riverboat during its first yr of operation. (The Diamond peeress was latterly discovered broken and submerged inwards mud in a backwater Memphis marina, a sad skeleton in the cupboard of her former self.)
Originally, riverboat bets could only if live a maximum of $5, and losses were limited to $200 a session. The boats also were required to periodically go away on excursions, too. Those requirements were scuttled past 1993. And past the next year, the state’s first 3 land-based casinos opened their doors.
The Casino Queen Jacques Marquette launched in Feb 2000, connection 68 other gambling casino riverboats floating on rivers feeding the Atlantic Ocean. In 2004, the Ioway State Legislature voted to tolerate casinos to operate on moored barges inward man-made basins, eliminating the demand that casinos follow on boats. That developing led operators to clear hotels and retail spaces conterminous to the casinos.
But a slow but mass hejira of natation casinos to set ashore in the Hawkeye State – including casinos inwards Sioux City and Davenport – began virtually 15 years ago. The reason out Iowa casinos favor land is simple, according to IRGC executive Brian Ohorilko .
“Typically, on a land-based facility, thither is more blank space to offer non only if additional gaming but most importantly, additional non-gaming amenities,” he told reporters at the Jan. 26 hearing.
The fate of the Casino Queen Marquette riverboat was not announced.
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