Ohio’s largest casino will offer a preview later today of what’s to come when the venue opens for real in October. The $400 million Hollywood Casino Columbus becomes the state’s third gambling venue and will be the largest of all those being built. It will have 3,000 slot machines as well as 30 live poker tables and the ability to host blackjack and roulette. The 475,000-sq-foot venues will need 2,000 workers and will attract an estimated three million visitors a year. It follows casinos in Cleveland and Toledo with the final one slated to crop up in Cincinnati.
Kansas City casinos could soon be smoke free after a new campaign kicked off to ban sparking up in the area’s gambling venues. Clean Air Metro KC, a coalition of a number of different cancer societies and health departments, want all casinos in the Kansas City metropolitan area to be smoke free. Joyce Morrison, spokesperson for the group, told the Kansas City Star: “Our message to casinos: Smoke-free casinos are inevitable. We want to be able to have a conversation with you instead of fighting it out in legislative hearings”. Casinos are against banning smoking and have argued that customers will simply step across the river from Kansas City, Kansas and straight into the smoky halls of Kansas City, Missouri. Venues in the neighbouring state claimed revenue would be a lost if a similar ban were instituted and cited revenue drops in Illinois and Colorado when both brought smoking bans in.
Californian Governor Jerry Brown will decide if two new tribal casinos will be build in the state. Brown has until the end of the month to give a yay or nay to plans by two Sierra foothill tribes to build casinos miles from their reservations on locations near to Central Valley freeways. It’s a pivotal move as there are already two other tribes operating venues in the area and even more tribes looking to grab a piece of the gambling industry pie.
