MOUNT AIRY CASINO
Mount Airy Casino
A
The Pennsylvania casino and resort is set for a very bright future. President and CEO George Toth spoke to Casino International about the project and its recent table gaming approval…
tlantic City is falling on hard times, and when the competition is as good as Mount Airy, it’s easy to see why. It’s closer to New York than Atlantic City is, set in picturesque mountains with its own 18-
hole golf course. To top things off, April saw the resort granted permission to install table games. The future in Pennsyvlania certainly seems bright, as George Toth told us…
Casino International: Tell us about Mount Airy Casino and Resort… Did you recently have a renovation?
George Toth: It’s a complete new build, rather than
a renovation, and it cost around $450million. The owners took over an existing facility that was an old lodge, which they demolished and got their gaming license in October 2007. That’s when the $450million facility opened up, so it was actually a couple years ago. We’re still finishing aspects of it; for example the
18-hole golf course opened up this year with all new irrigation, some new greens and tees. We have the 188-room hotel, spa, five dining options as well as the golf. In total, we cover around 1500 acres. Right now we’re working on our masterplan to develop that 1500 acres… It’s going to be a mixed-
use development which will include more hotel rooms – we hope to have about 1,000 when we’re done – plus mixed use retail, condominiums and housing.
CI: What’s your nearest population centre?
GT: New York, which is about 85 miles away. New
York City and North Jersey are our primary markets. We’re located in the mountains in north-east Pennsylvania just across the river from New Jersey so our market stretches right across Jersey and into NY. Customers from North Jersey only have an 80-
minute drive to get to us; for customers from New York to get to Atlantic City, they have to drive around two hours to two-and-a-half hours, but to get to us it’s only an hour and 15 minutes.
CI: There’s been a lot of talk about racinos and
how the Pennsylvania market is impacting Atlantic City’s fortunes; have you noticed an upswing in your business?
GT: We had a major competitor open up a year ago, which is the Las Vegas Sands in Bethlehem. We lost that southern market, or a portion of it, to them – but now that we have been approved to have table games, that will bring us that Jersey market which is really where our base market will end up being.
34 MAY 2010
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