LINCOLN – What’s been known as Twin River Casino Hotel since 2007 is now called Bally’s Twin River Casino Lincoln.
Casino executives from Bally’s Corp. and state officials, including Gov. Daniel J. McKee, gathered on Thursday afternoon outside the casino to celebrate the rebranding and to mark the start of a $100 million expansion project at the casino and hotel in Lincoln which will add 50,000-square-feet to the facility, including a new Korean-style spa. The casino handed out Bally’s Twin River Lincoln branded merchandise to guests at the groundbreaking, including hats, pens and mugs.
Craig Sculos, the general manager of the Lincoln casino, said the goal is for the project to be completed by late October in 2022.
It’s not immediately clear how many permanent jobs and construction jobs the expansion could produce, Sculos said, but Bally’s will know soon as it finalizes construction plans with contractor Suffolk Construction this week. When it’s at full capacity, there’s 2,000 permanent jobs at Twin River in Lincoln, and this project will preserve those jobs and add more, Sculos said.
“It’s preserving jobs and creating jobs,” Sculos said. “Today starts the process of enhancing the guest experience. It certainly brings this whole property, Twin River, to a whole new level.”
Sculos said the casino will move forward with rebranding amid the 12- to 14-month expansion project, including new signage, playing cards, layouts for table games, dice, chips and casino-branded merchandise.
“As a matter of fact, the Twin River chips will probably become collector’s items,” he said. “We see a lot of people hanging on to their $1 and $5 chips.”
The casino expansion project was promised as part of a 20-year lottery agreement between the state, Bally’s Corp., and International Game Technology PLC, signed in June.
The lottery deal requires IGT to pay the R.I. Department of Revenue $27 million, including $13.5 million by June 30, 2023, while Bally’s must pay $500,000 over the course of three years, in exchange providing the casino company “renaming rights” to an Interstate-195 Redevelopment District park.
The expansion comes after a rocky 18 months for Bally’s Rhode Island casinos, and consequently state coffers, which rely on Bally’s 162,000-square-foot casino in Lincoln, with its 4,100 slot machines and 125 live table games. A chunk of gambling revenues from Twin River, the company’s newer Tiverton Casino Hotel and the state lottery are combined to provide Rhode Island with its third largest source of revenue, amounting to $283.9 million in fiscal 2020. In June, the R.I. Department of Revenue estimated the fiscal 2021 revenues from state-sponsored gambling was $301.8 million.
Before casino revenues flatlined when the pandemic hit in 2020, causing Twin River and Tiverton Casino to close from March 14 to June 8, table games at the two casinos provided state coffers with $1.55 million in the month of February 2020 (from the $9.99 million in overall revenue generated by table games). In their first month back, July 2020, however, the Rhode Island government hauled in only $705,352 from table games (of a total $4.55 million in table games revenue).
Revenue has bounced back more recently to pre-pandemic levels, Sculos said. In July, the latest month with data available from the Department of Revenue, Rhode Island’s share of table games revenue was collecting $1.58 million (of a total $10.2 million in table game revenues). July was the first time that Rhode Island captured at least $1.5 million of table game revenues since February 2020.
“Revenues have actually in many cases are approaching 2019,” Sculos said. “Visitation has remained stable. What we’re seeing is the most serious players are coming back. The casual players right now tend to be those that are coming a little bit less frequently.”
Sculos said the bounce back comes as Bally’s Twin River Lincoln gets ready to reopen its 136-room hotel on Oct. 1, for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started. And the casino’s restaurant Fred & Steve’s Steakhouse plans to reopen on Sept. 23, he said.
The poker room remains shut down at Twin River, but Sculos said the casino hopes to resolve staffing issues by late fall in order to reopen the poker tables.
Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi said the expansion was a “cornerstone” of the 20-year lottery deal with Bally’s and IGT.
“It will significantly increase revenue for the state for years to come,” Shekarchi said.
McKee agreed that the expansion will help Rhode Island’s bottom line, helping Bally’s Twin River Lincoln compete with resort casinos in Massachusetts and Connecticut. McKee said he wasn’t concerned about market saturation, and that he could only control what happens in Rhode Island.
“This positions us very well within the gaming industry, which, as you mentioned, is an important part of our economy,” McKee said to a group of reporters after the groundbreaking. “We have to compete. It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s our universities or our hospitals. … Any time we are expanding, bringing more workers on, employing people to do the expansion, that only circulates more revenue into the state, which eventually will end up helping the state budget.”
Marc Larocque is a PBN staff writer. Contact him at Larocque@PBN.com.
