No opening date set yet for Parx Casino in Shippensburg Township
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No date has been set for when the Parx Casino branch in Shippensburg Township could open to the public, Richard McGarvey of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said Monday.
“It will be later in the year,” he said. “As we get closer, the actual start date will become clearer.”
There will be a one-to-two-day test session where accessibility will be limited to just guests invited by the casino to go into the facility and play the games, McGarvey said. The goal is to make sure all the equipment works, the staff members are trained and the accounting procedures are in place.
Once the facility checks out, the casino would be open to the public.
In January, the gaming board approved licenses for a branch casino to be located in the former Lowe’s building, 250 Conestoga Drive, Shippensburg Township.
The satellite casino will occupy a little over half of the existing 139,410 square foot building and contain 500 slot machines, 48 electronic table games, a restaurant and a sports bar.
The holder of the licenses is GW Cumberland Op Co., an LLC that is owned by Parx’s parent company, which does business as Greenwood Racing and Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment.
Greenwood Chief Operating Officer John Dixon spoke before the gaming board in January. At the time, he told the board that work to retrofit the building could begin in February with project completion expected in November.
The project is the result of Pennsylvania’s 2017 gaming expansion law, under which the gaming board has auctioned the rights to establish satellite mini-casinos to those operators who already have flagship locations. Parx’s primary casino is in Bensalem Township in Bucks County, northeast of Philadelphia.
Parx secured the rights to a satellite location in 2018 for $8.1 million, but its first two proposed sites, in Carlisle Borough and South Middleton Township, did not get off the ground after the municipalities declined to revoke the casino opt-clauses that they had exercised under the 2017 gaming law.
Shippensburg Township, however, did not utilize the opt-out clause, and allows casinos in commercial zoning districts under a conditional use ordinance. The township approved the casino’s application in 2021, finding that it met the zoning ordinance requirements.
The Shippensburg casino will have about 100 full-time employees and another 100 part-time and/or seasonal employees, according to Parx representatives.
While the casino would draw from the local market, the site’s proximity to I-81 means that Parx plans to target the Hagerstown and western Maryland market as well, Dixon said in January.
