Expanded Gambling Opens Up New Possibilities For Baltimore's Casino
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Maryland voters have spoken! There will be expanded gambling in Maryland, including a new casino in Baltimore. Now Caesars Entertainment is talking about its plans.
Derek Valcourt explains--a change is in the works.
The backers of Baltimore's casino originally planned for an all-slots Harrah's Casino, but not anymore. Now they are changing the name. Soon, a Horseshoe Casino will ride into town.
Horseshoe brand casinos are focused around table games and now that voters have approved Question 7, the operators of Baltimore's first casino plan to take full advantage.
"This changes the project significantly," said John Payne, Caesars Entertainment.
The owners of Caesars Casino in Las Vegas will also own Baltimore's Horseshoe Casino, and promise legendary service along with style and elegance. They showed WJZ interior photos of other Horseshoe Casinos for a glimpse of what's to come. The casino promises to keep some video slot machines, but now they'll add as many as 80-110 table games.
"The extra restaurants that we're going to now add, the increased facility capacity that we'll have in our multipurpose area, wee're going to build a World Series of Poker room, which started under the Horseshoe name. And all of that together, we believe, is a perfect fit for our location," Payne said.
While the square footage and the exterior of the building won't change, they are now scrambling to redesign the layout of their floorspace and planning to spend roughly an extra $25 million on the project.
And the backers of Baltimore's casino say because table games were approved, they now need to hire an additional 500 full-time employees. Most of those jobs will be table game dealers and supervisors.
Groundbreaking for the new casino is set for sometime in the first half of 2013, with the planned opening sometime in mid 2014.
