Mohegan Sun Sunday June 9th

On Friday, I wrote about Foxwoods and their new look to expand. Today, let's look at Mohegan Sun's possible future.

Sun raisees ante in Western Mass
The owners of Mohegan Sun resort in Uncasville have grown their proposal for a casino in Palmer, Mass. to $1 billion with a waterpark and a second hotel.  This gives the Mohegans bid the largest and most expensive proposal of the three casinos vying for the sole casino gaming license in western Massachusetts. The other two are $800 million bids from MGM Grand in Springfield and Hard Rock in West Springfield.
The Mohegan's 70,000-square-foot indoor-outdoor waterpark will be connected to a 250-room hotel separate from the property's main hotel. The waterpark will be build by Boston-based Finard Properties, which also partnered with Mohegan to put a retail complex at the resort casino site.
Mohegan Sun Massachusetts proposal now includes 3,000 slot machines, 80 table games, two restaurants with 350 seats, a food court, a car and lounge with a entertainment stage, a 300-room hotel with a ballroom and meeting rooms, a 300,000-square-foot retail development, and structured and surface parking.
Plans for the water park will include a “tremendous indoor component” and “an outdoor component that in some ways is limitless,” Finard said. “When we start to set the final plans for zip lines and horseback trails and some of the other outdoor elements that go along with this, it’s hard to really quantify.  “A guest will come during the winter perhaps for snowshoeing outdoors and indoor kayaking and indoor surfing,” said Finard. “During the summer, you’ll have zip lines to take you all around the property. A guest experience on zip lines could last hours. You could send them tower to tower and provide the kind of entertainment that we haven’t seen in this part of the country.” Plans call for the second hotel of about 250 rooms to be connected to the water park and detached from the main casino hotel.

Mohegan Sun Expansion Into Catskills
Mitchell G. Etess, chief executive officer of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, said the company is set to operate and manage “The Mohegan Sun Concord,” a planned $600 million resort very similar to Palmer in terms of size and scope. Its the site of the former Concord Hotel in Thompson, New York. The New York casino would include a 258-room hotel, a 75,000-square-foot casino with 2,100 video lottery terminals and up to 450 electronic table game positions, five restaurants, retail space, harness race track, grandstand and simulcast and 10,000 square feet of ballrooms and meeting space.

Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs
Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, a racino in Pennsylvania, features over 2,300 slots, and live table games, as well as a ⅝-mile (1-kilometre) harness track.
The Sun acquired the Pocono Downs racetrack in 2005 from Penn National Gaming. Mohegan Sun renamed the property "Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs," and began a major expansion. It began operation in November 2006 as the first slots casino in the state of Pennsylvania. The Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs casino was among the first to receive approval for table games on July 13, 2010.

And How is PA Doing?
Pennsylvania's first casino opened in 2006, and the state has grown into the nation's second-largest gambling market behind Las Vegas. However, while table games growth has remained strong, slots revenues have been decreasing. Gross revenue from slot machines declined for the fifth straight month in April, down 4 percent from the same period the year before.

That's all for now. Tomorrow - a review of the Newport Grand!

Binbin