Pa. gaming halls make way for tables

Let the games begin!

Long before Gov. Rendell's signature was affixed yesterday to legislation legalizing table games in Pennsylvania, casino owners were strategizing how to reconfigure their gaming floors, how many games they would start with, and how many and which new positions to fill.

Now, they have the green light.

"Now, it's action time," said Bob Green, chairman of Greenwood Gaming & Entertainment Inc., owner and operator of Pennsylvania's most profitable gambling hall, PhiladelphiaPark Casino & Racetrack in Bensalem.

Soon, the slots-only parlor will house about 120 conventional table games, such as craps, blackjack, and roulette, in the expanded PARX casino that debuted last month, as well as 60 to 70 poker tables in the grandstand area.

Green said he did not even wait for Rendell's signature to forge ahead. Within minutes of the bill's passage Wednesday, he called his contractor and architect to draft a construction schedule, and he called equipment managers about the mix of table games he was interested in.

Then yesterday, Green said, he was holed up for hours in meetings, poring over every line of the 230-page law, evaluating how much additional staff would be needed, and working on other design details.

That same scene - a flurry of activity blended with a sense of impending doom if things do not move fast enough - played out throughout the state yesterday, from Philadelphia to the Poconos to Pittsburgh, wherever the state's nine casinos are or their parent companies are based.

In Las Vegas, Las Vegas Sands Corp., owner of the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, was watching every move in Harrisburg.

Sands Bethlehem plans to start off with 80 to 100 table games. "Final details on number of tables and types will come at a later date," company spokesman Ron Reese said.

Las Vegas Sands was so confident about table games becoming a Pennsylvania reality that in September it decided to forgo adding 2,000 slot machines in a 40,000-square-foot area of the casino.

Instead, when Sands Bethlehem opened its expanded venue Dec. 1, it had only 250 more slots, for a total of 3,200, and reserved the prime real estate for table games.

Greg Carlin, chief operating officer of the Rivers Casino in downtown Pittsburgh and the SugarHouse Casino proposed for Philadelphia's waterfront, said his teams were busy yesterday "working on our table-game plan so that we can have gaming tables in operation as soon as practicable."

The $780 million Rivers Casino debuted Aug. 9 on Pittsburgh's North Shore waterfront, while the SugarHouse Casino is being built in phases, aimed toward a hoped-for late-summer opening.

Carlin said he was "targeting 80 tables, including 20 poker at Rivers, and 40 tables initially at SugarHouse and increasing when we expand."

"Given the size of our interim facility in Philly, we aren't planning on having poker until we expand," he said.

Wendy Wilson, spokeswoman for the Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Poconos, spent much of her day discussing new TV commercials, online ads, and billboards with the casino's owner, marketing team, advertising firm, and senior executives.

"We had a very big meeting on marketing table games and how to introduce them and let people know that Pennsylvania now has table games," Wilson said.

One more thing Mount Airy will start soon: job fairs to fill 275 to 350 full-time positions.

The state's first stand-alone casino plans to start with 73 table games: 54 (blackjack, roulette, craps, mini-baccarat) on the main floor; 4 high-end tables on the third floor overlooking the lake; and 15 poker tables overlooking the casino floor.

The state Gaming Control Board said it could take six to nine months to install table games at the nine casinos.

"As soon as the gaming board says, 'We have the regulators in place,' we'll be ready," Wilson said.

So will its chief competitor: Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, a racetrack casino about 45 miles away.

"We're looking at putting 60 table games initially, not including poker," Bobby Soper, casino president, said yesterday. The mix will be blackjack, craps, roulette, and other popular games.

The casino has had a table-games plan in the works since early June, Soper said.

"The bill evolved over time, and like other operators, we have been monitoring it and hoping it would just get to the finish line. There's been no big surprises."