Southland unveils new timeline for expansion project

Developers eye mid-2022 for opening casino, hotel

ralphhardin@gmail.com After being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new opening date has been set for the $250 million expansion at Southland Casino Racing.

This week, the final beam for the expansion was put in place.

The casino reopened May 18, 2020, following COVID-19 shutdowns. It had previously expanded its weekend hours to 24hour days this past October. Southland returned to 24 hours, seven days a week hours on March 5.

Southland continues to push forward with the construction of its $250 million expansion, which consists of a new gaming complex and a 20-story, 300room high-rise hotel.

Though, the timetable has been shifted.

Natalie Carlson, marketing manager of Southland Casino, said a significant amount of work has been completed on the new gaming complex and hotel.

However, as a result of COVID, everything had to be pushed back. The gaming complex was slated to be finished in 2021, with the hotel following about six months later. “We adopted a controlled pace for construction based on the pandemic’s financial impact on the business since March and going forward into 2021,' Carlson

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said. 'We have a great facility in place and so it’s fine for us to push out completion of the expansion to after business conditions should be back to normal.'

When complete, this project will add 500 gaming machines and 60 live table games to Southland. The project will create 400 new jobs at the casino and hotel. The new casino and restaurants will open in mid-2022 and the hotel will open a few months later.