Plans to fully reopen Golden Moon, upgrade it and Silver Star progressing
With a new financing package in place, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians says it’s ready to move forward with plans to return Golden Moon Hotel and Casino to full-time operating hours and to upgrade hotel rooms and reconfigure gaming floors there and at Silver Star Hotel and Casino.
The tribe hasn’t said when Golden Moon, which has operated on weekends only since the start of 2009, will return to a seven-day-a-week schedule. Work to upgrade hotel rooms and reconfigure gaming floors at each facility, part of MBCI’s Pearl River Resort in Neshoba County, is set to begin in August, with the new rooms coming online beginning in November. The effort could cost as much as $75 million.
“In the past two years, we’ve seen great strides in operational improvements. We’ve made progress in our profitability. This is (MBCI) taking care of an important property,” said Pearl River Resort president and CEO Holly Gagnon.
Pearl River Resort in January 2009 eliminated 570 positions throughout its enterprise, which also includes Dancing Rabbit Golf Course and Geyser Falls Water Park, during the depths of the recession. While the economy continues to recover, the state’s nontribal casinos continue to see declining revenue due in large part to increased competition in neighboring states and elsewhere.
MBCI isn’t required to disclose its gaming revenue to the state, and Gagnon wouldn’t provide specific figures for Pearl River Resort. But she says she’s “happy with the trends we’re seeing.”
Hotel rooms at both properties will essentially be remade from scratch, with new flooring, furniture, television sets and other amenities in the works. Gaming floors will be redesigned and new equipment purchased.
Despite the revenue drops at the state’s nontribal casinos, some of those facilities have reinvested millions of dollars in recent years on upgrading their rooms and adding other amenities to keep established customers coming back while gaining new visitors in a market awash in new competition.
Pearl River’s goal, Gagnon says, is to boost the number of multi-night stays, which a gaming facility needs to thrive, by creating the kind of unique visitor experience that extends beyond the casino floor. “It will be different but vastly improved from what it was before,” she said.
To propel the effort, the tribe’s Choctaw Resort Development Enterprise on Wednesday signed paperwork on a new term loan of $145 million — an existing $70 million that is being refinanced and will be used on existing debt and up to $75 million that can be drawn upon “as needed over the next 24 months” for the renovations, according to a note from CRDE to senior note holders. The loan will mature in March 2019.
The loan will better achieve long-term savings, the group says in the note, adding, “With our continuing improved financial and operational performance, strong balance sheet and additional borrowing capacity to make the necessary capital improvements throughout the resort, CRDE is well positioned to leverage our business model and continue to improve the operational and financial performance of the resort over the next five years.”
Contact Jeff Ayres at (601) 961-7050 or jeff.ayres@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @jeffayres71 on Twitter.