According to Hamilton, the team is weighted
on the distaff side for one reason only: these profes- sionals are the best of the bunch. “At the time we opened, it was a rough time in
“
the industry, and there was a lot of demand to get in here,” says Hamilton, who started as a front desk agent with Harrah’s in 1994, opened Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, as GM in 2009, and took the helm at SugarHouse shortly before it opened last year. “There were 30,000 applications for 1,000 jobs, and we were lucky we could choose from the very best. We just happened to end up with more women than men.” Cook, a former day-one dealer at Resorts At-
ary, the weekly win averaged $2.3 million, less than half what was forecast the previous
WE WANTED PEOPLE WHO COULD THINK ON THEIR FEET.
WE WANTED PEOPLE WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR, PEOPLE
WHO WOULD HEAR THE QUESTION AND LAUGH, NOT PANIC.
—Wendy Hamilton General Manager
lantic City, agrees. “Given our location”—an hour from Atlantic City, and just a few miles from chief competitors Parx and Harrah’s Chester Casino & Racetrack—“we were able to draw from a huge talent pool, not just east of the Ben Franklin Bridge but in the entire country. “Everyone here is highly experienced, but there was no goal on anybody’s part to fill a team with women. It just happened that way.”
BIG NUMBERS When it comes to the casino’s performance, the numbers—and the crowds—don’t lie. While first-year gross revenues were somewhat less than the projections at about $212 million, at 11 a.m. on a recent weekday the gaming floor was already hum- ming. By early afternoon the same day, most of the dealers were two-deep in pa- trons, and about three-quarters of the slot machines were occupied. And while slot revenue was a little wobbly out of the gate (in Janu-
WITH ENERGY AND ENTHUSIASM,
May), the casino has since proven a worthy com- petitor to Parx and Harrah’s Chester, each about 15 miles outside the city. In September, SugarHouse— built on the site of an old Jack Frost sugar refin- ery—earned more than $9,600 per machine, well above the state average of $7,500. The casino has also proven a table-games jug-
plans, SugarHouse’s bang-up inaugural year has paved the way for growth. Penn- sylvania’s smallest casino—Hamilton calls it “the little engine that could”—could soon double in size, adding several dozen new tables and hundreds of new slots, along with four restaurants, a poker room, a second-floor banquet center and a six-story parking garage. The expansion, which is expected to begin next summer and be complete by late 2013, would bring SugarHouse nearer to its originally planned size, which was modified when the recession crumpled the capital mar- ket. The expansion would also add hundreds of additional permanent jobs. Applicants for those jobs
”
www.ggbmagazine.com • November 2011
may face an unorthodox inter- view process. Imagine fac- ing a panel of hiring bosses during a
gernaut, raking in more than $46 million in its first nine months. With just 46 tables (Harrah’s Chester has almost twice as many), SugarHouse ranked fifth in table-games revenue among 10 casinos in the Keystone State in its first year. In some months, it’s seen the highest per-unit return on tables in the state ($154,000 per table). As many casino companies scale back expansion
19
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