Casino hotel towers are beginning to loom over the landscape. But that landscape isn't in Kansas. It's in Oklahoma, where tribal casinos are outgrowing their truck-stop image. Several have become the lavish destination resorts Kansas thought it was getting when lawmakers passed an expanded gaming bill in 2007. While Kansas waits for a new round of proposals after the sinking economy wiped out casino plans in Sumner County and elsewhere...
Tulsa, Oklahoma (AP) - The Cherokee Nation is planning to brand its expanded 19-story hotel and casino near Tulsa as the Hard Rock Casino Tulsa. Cherokee Nation Enterprises announced the license agreement with Hard Rock Hotel Holdings. The agreement still must be approved by the National Indian Gaming Commission. As part of the Hard Rock brand, the new resort will include the traditional Hard Rock decor, memorabilia and merchandise...
The Eastern Shawnee tribe of Oklahoma and the city of Monroe are again discussing a potential deal that might bring a casino to Warren County, the Hamilton Journal-News reported Tuesday. The West Seneca, Okla.-based tribe is now proposing a USD 300 million to USD 350 million casino complex for a 123-acre site in the city and Turtlecreek Township, according to the story.
The Oklahoma-based Quapaw Tribe’s USD 200 million Downstream Casino Resort is set to open July 5 on the Kansas state line about seven miles west of Joplin. A 12-story, 226-room hotel will be the tallest structure for miles around and is scheduled to open in the late fall. The first of 2,000 slot machines have arrived and are being installed. The casino won’t have craps or roulette, but it will offer blackjack and other table games, mini-baccarat, a poker room and a race book.
The federal government has warned an Oklahoma Indian tribe not to open a planned off-reservation gambling casino along an interstate highway in southern New Mexico. The National Indian Gaming Commission told the Fort Sill Apache Tribe on Thursday that it cannot legally open the casino and risked enforcement action if gambling is permitted on the tribally owned land in New Mexico. The commission issued its letter a day after Gov. Bill Richardson ordered state police to block access to the tribe's casino if gambling was started.
Oklahoma City (AP) — Oklahoma is now third in the nation in the number of slot machines in the state, according to a study of the gaming industry nationwide, and Oklahomans spent an average of more than USD 600 per capita to gamble. The 597-page study illustrates Oklahoma’s development as a gambling state since November 2004, when voters approved expanded casino gaming and a lottery. It found Oklahoma has a slot machine for every 79 residents and the state’s 97 casinos held 45,289 machines at the end of 2006, representing 5.5 percent of all such machines in the U.S.
Devol, Oklahoma - In true Las Vegas fashion - complete with celebrity impersonators, showgirls and Playboy Playmates - the sparkling Kiowa Casino threw open its doors Wednesday to a rush of people in pursuit of filling their pockets with cash. As quickly as the doors to the new gaming facility opened, a massive crowd of gamblers pushed and shoved their way in, filling virtually every slot machine and most card tables on the 63,000-square-foot gaming floor within minutes.
