Casino on track for spring opening

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DANVILLE — With October here, the clock is ticking to get the Golden Nugget Danville Casino building closed in by Thanksgiving for construction to continue in the winter months.

On or around April 1 is the target opening date.

“There is nothing that we see right now that will prevent us from being open in April of 2023,” General Manager Juris Basens said.

Basens said right now they are ahead of schedule to close in the building, with the roof on and sealed-in walls.

“You can see there’s a lot of activity going on. Parts of it is looking like a finished building,” he said.

Basens said all the paving and striping around the building for parking areas is expected to be completed too by Thanksgiving.

He said that’s important for where the employment center and temporary offices will be in trailers in one corner of the lot.

“The sequencing of everything right now, barring any catastrophes, weather, whatever it is, are very rosy right now,” Basens said.

“We haven’t set a date yet,” he added of opening day. “We’ll do that after the first of the year.”

He said realistically they were looking at the end of March, early April 2023 for opening.

They have to have the building and staffing ready, and coordination with the Illinois Gaming Board to make sure they’re prepared to open. The IGB will conduct a mock casino, and test the casino’s systems and readiness, before receiving its permission to open.

There were initially three buildings on the site. The main building of about 50,000 square feet was kept for repurposing. Two other outbuildings were demolished for the parking area.

General contractor Wilhelm Construction is of Indianapolis. An agreement with local trades has many local contractors being used for the project.

The key things being worked on now are all the underground items, before they seal the concrete. Also, all the conduits in the ceilings, plumbing and electrical to enclose everything. After the fire proofing and the building’s sealed, then they are weatherproofed.

Basens also is starting to hire now. Between now and January, he’ll have 15 to 25 people working as department heads to put together operating and other plans. Some he might find locally, but many are outside the area with gaming experience.

He’s in the process of recruiting now. He thinks he’s hired a finance director and operations director, from Indiana and from the Chicago area, with 40 years of experience of casino combined.

“And they’re excited about coming to Danville which I’m thrilled about,” he said.

Basens said Danville Area Community College will be helping with recruiting and training for dealers, slot technicians and slot attendants and several other positions. The training will occur on the DACC campus.

“We’ve already designated the rooms for that,” Basens said. “The relationship has been great so far.”

Classes will start after the first of the year.

Basens said it doesn’t take long to train a dealer or slot technician.

“You want to build up the enthusiasm and the excitement,” he said.

If they were to train someone now and the person gets their certificate, they’re going to get another job or lose interest.

“So, we want to build on the enthusiasm of opening,” he added. “The people that come work here I want them to feel a sense of ownership.”

Basens wants employees to say, ‘that’s where I work’ and wear the uniform proudly and tell people they love working there.

“We want to hire locally,” he said.

In the next two weeks they will be advertising more on national websites for jobs. Career and vendor information already has been available through the casino’s website.

The casino will be looking to hire 300 full-time equivalents to run it seven days a week. It’s not operated 24 hours, but closed for certain hours every day in Illinois.

He doesn’t know how many of those jobs will be part-time. The employee count could be 300 to 450 for the casino and restaurants.

Saltgrass Steakhouse is owned by their partners from Landry’s.

The name for the sports bar, quick fast food and sportsbook hasn’t been released yet.

“It’s a fun name. We’re going to play a little game behind it,” Basens said.

Basens, who’s originally from Philadelphia and who is living in Champaign due to a favorite gym being there, has opened more than a dozen casinos, one being Par-A-Dice in Peoria and others at various locations including Louisiana, Mississippi, Atlantic City, Bahamas and California.

“I’m a casino lifer, started in 1978,” he said. He worked his way up from being a casino dealer and worked his first executive job in the Bahamas. He said the crazy riverboat gaming stuff started, and that’s what set his career off.

He’s now worked for the Wilmot family and Wilmorite for the last 20 years.

“My passion is opening and putting good teams together, getting organizations together, hiring people and then watching them in their careers ... plus making money for the owners,” he said.

Golden Nugget Danville construction started in the spring, after the Illinois Gaming Board approved the casino license and financing was in place. The IGB gave the project the approval to build, and the lenders gave the money to build.

New, contemporary casino

In addition to locals and people traveling through the area coming to the casino and restaurants, the Danville casino also could bus people here like Par-A-Dice buses people from Danville and elsewhere to its Peoria casino.

Basens said the East Peoria casino is a nice casino and owner Boyd Gaming does a really good job.

“They’re a 30-year old riverboat. I can reach up and touch the ceiling in there,” he said.

“We will be new. It’s more of a casino feel. We really want to hit the Champaign market. That’s the biggest population base. Right now people in Champaign go to Peoria,” he said.

“If people want to get on a bus and come visit us, we will definitely get in that business,” he said. “Buses have always been a big part of the casino industry.”

The casino’s look is a Golden Nugget. It’s a legacy look in the casino industry that started with Steve Wynn who bought the original downtown Golden Nugget. He sold the Golden Nugget franchise to Tilman Fertitta about 15 years ago, Basens said.

The Danville casino will have the Golden Nugget icon and lighting and gold and black on the outside of the building. There will be landscaping around it, to screen it from the surrounding industries.

He said the public will see the iconic look, such as with the interior decorations of the reds, golds and other things.

“Outside of that we’re going to be a little bit more contemporary in our uniforming. We don’t know what our uniforms are going to be yet, but it’s not going to be that western theme. We want to match what’s here and maybe make it a little bit more contemporary,” Basens said.

The sports bar is not going to be the traditional green visor sportsbook.

Most people are going to be doing their sports wagering on their phone.

“But we will have kiosks there. There won’t be an attendant there. It will be an upscale sportsbook, with the high technology TVs, tickers and the bar and a fun menu,” Basens said.

The menu will have typical sport bar menu items and maybe a little Italian mixed in and who knows what else, he added.

“It’ll be pretty eclectic,” he said.

The sports bar will have a completely different look than the Golden Nugget casino gaming area.

Saltgrass also has its own theming and will have a separate entrance for families with children. Children can’t go into the sports bar because there will be gaming devices, kiosks for sports wagering and slot machines.

Basens knows people are excited for the steakhouse too.

He said they also looked at Morton’s Steakhouse. But its prices are more expensive for this market.

“Our pricing will be reasonable,” he said. “We want to fit in the marketplace.”

There is an additional 20,000 square feet that won’t be finished at this time in the casino building.

“We know that we need a casino. We know that we need slot machines and table games. We know that we need food, which we have those two food venues. We want to listen to our customers for the first six to eight months. Do they want extra gaming space, do they want to have like a maybe a little lounge that has music. We don’t know yet. We want the customers to tell us what they want,” Basens said.

That space is already under roof. It’s new construction as far as finish out, but not an addition to the building.

Basens too said they aren’t building a hotel because of the hundreds of rooms already available off Lynch Road.

“Three of them are virtually brand-new product,” he said.

The hotels are more booked during the weekdays and fight for business on weekends, he said.

“We can help fill their places and it’s convenient for our customers,” he said.

He said down the road, they can expand to build a hotel tower if needed.

“This is a nice complementary situation, and that’s part of why we picked this area of the city also. Because the hotels are already here, and easy access off and on the interstate,” Basens said.

A connector road from Lynch Road to Eastgate Drive is in the permitting process, Basens said.

The casino will be surrounded by about 600 parking spaces.

Basens said that amount is appropriate for this size of casino, but they might have challenges with employee parking on weekends. There’s space available around there where they can shuttle employees.

“That will be a good problem for us to have,” he said.

The maximum occupancy inside the casino will be determined with the fire marshal, and there could be issues of capacity at the start when it newly opens.

“We always know exactly how many people are in the casino, and then we abide by the local codes with the fire marshal on who can be in the building and who can’t, and obviously we have all the safety protocols that are required,” Basens said about checking identifications.

At Saltgrass Steakhouse, for those coming in with people under age 21, the restaurant is entirely on its own. However, there is an entrance in and out of the casino too.

They will start teasing the casino’s opening with the public in December and then a little bit more in January with advertising and billboards.

“The lenders scrutinize every dollar you spend,” Basens said.

Basens said they communicate with the IGB at different levels multiple times a week. They submit internal controls as they finish different departments, for IGB approval.

The developers also have an outside regulatory attorney who communicates all the time with the IGB. There are background checks on new contractors, and things non-stop, Basens said.

“It’s an open line of communication,” he added.

The budget is $100,000 million to open the casino’s doors.

“That’s a proper investment for this market and we think we’ll be successful at that amount and we think we will be able to grow,” Basens said.

It’s calm right now with construction and hiring progressing, but in the next several months it will be controlled chaos in opening the casino, he said.

There will be 18- to 19-hour workdays closer to opening.

When opening day gets here, the owners will be taking photos and “we’re just saying we’ve got another one done.” Basens said. “And that’s the fun part of it.”