Palace Casino Resort
In the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina’s 145 mph winds and 28-foot storm surge, much of
the Gulf Coast of Mississippi lay in smithereens. In coastal
Harrison County alone, 87 people died in the storm. Devastated
hotels, casinos, restaurants and tourist attractions slumped up and
down U.S. 90, also known as Beach Boulevard. Most buildings had
been stripped bare to their I-beams, and any other structure that
stood looked battered and waterlogged. In truth, a lot of the
thriving beachfront development in Biloxi and Gulfport -- including
a “Casino Row” that employed 17,000 people and supplied 10 percent
of Mississippi’s tax revenue - seemed beyond repair.
Beau Rivage Resort &
Casino
Now, just 10 months later, the outlook
is significantly brighter along this stretch of the Mississippi
coast, despite what difficult work lies ahead.
“We’re still dealing with Katrina’s
impact,” says Steve Richer, executive director of the Mississippi
Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau. “More than 65,000
houses were destroyed or damaged. There are still lots of people
living in FEMA trailers.”
Isle of Capri Biloxi Casino
Resort
Formerly housed comfortably in a
4,000-square-foot office, Richer and his staff are working out of a
double-wide trailer for now. Funded by the county, the CVB has
played an integral role in coordinating the area’s recovery and
pitching in with manpower.
“We’ve had more than 10,000 volunteers
down here,” notes Richer. “The faith-based organizations and other
volunteer groups have been coming. It’s phenomenal. They’ve been
helping people with gutting houses, putting up roofs and sheetrock.
There are a lot of similarities between dealing with these groups
and booking a meeting. We’re hosting so many different people that
it’s hard to track them all.”
IP Hotel &
Casino
Apart from the personal rebuilding that
Gulf Coast residents must accomplish, much of Harrison County
itself -- the region encompassing Gulfport and Biloxi -- is
endeavoring to rebuild as a destination for leisure and business
travel. Indeed, there are plans in the works to create even greater
attractions than were here before Katrina, making this a
“first-tier” destination on a par with Las Vegas or Orlando, and
all by a target date of 2010.
“There is a veritable avalanche of
investment going on,” Richer says. “In terms of conventions and
meetings, much of what we need is coming into place quickly.”
One reason for this post-Katrina boom
in the Gulf Coast’s tourism product is a new law. When Mississippi
legalized gambling in 1990, the state’s casinos were restricted to
massive barges floating just offshore. But Katrina’s destructive
force seized these barge casinos like bath toys and hurled them
inland, causing unimaginable damage. About a month after the
hurricane struck, and following heated debate in the Mississippi
State Legislature, Gov. Haley Barbour signed a measure allowing
casinos to build on dry land near the shore -- a prerequisite if
the gaming industry were to roll the dice and come back to the
hurricane-prone region.
The benefits of the legislation were
quickly apparent: On Dec. 26, 2005, the Isle of Capri Biloxi Casino
Resort, which had been the area’s first offshore casino, reopened
with the Gulf’s first dry-land casino inside a 731-room hotel,
featuring 1,100 slot machines, 27 table games and a new poker room.
Other reopened casinos along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast include the
1,086-room Imperial Palace (now doing business as the IP), which
has refurbished 1,000 guest rooms and added new eateries; and the
Palace Casino Resort, which reopened Dec. 30 in its onshore hotel
with 800 slot machines and 40 table games. At press time, the IP
was the sole hotel-casino facility with available meeting space,
and a total of about 5,000 of the area’s guest rooms were back
online.
Other casino resorts are coming back to
life, including the following.
* Harrah’s Biloxi Grand Casino, reduced
to 500 rooms from 1,000, will reopen on Aug. 17 in a temporary
locale;
* The 1,740-room Beau Rivage Resort
& Casino is set to reopen on the first anniversary of Katrina’s
landfall, Aug. 29;
* The Treasure Bay Casino and Condo
Resort promises a September reopening (this and other rebuiding
properties have yet to announce new room counts);
* The Boomtown Casino is planning a new
gaming complex and a reopening by year’s end;
* The Copa Casino in Gulfport will
reopen its casino in the former Oasis Hotel while the Copa’s barge
undergoes repairs at a shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss.
Best of all for the Gulf Coast’s
renaissance, entirely new projects are in the works. Harrah’s
reportedly is in the design phase of a new $1 billion resort and
casino complex. “In the coming months and years, we will develop
our property in Biloxi into a true destination resort, building on
the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s position as a must-visit vacation
spot,” says Anthony Sanfilippo, president of Harrah’s Central
Division.
Additionally, the $500 million Bacaran
Bay Casino and Condo Resort will be constructed on Back Bay Biloxi
over the next two years.
Aside from casino resorts and hotels,
other convention infrastructure is making a comeback. The
180,000-square-foot Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention
Center, which served as the area’s shelter of last resort during
Katrina, is undergoing repairs and renovations while serving as the
base for 900 FEMA personnel. The MCCCC’s 11,000-seat arena reopened
in May for local graduations and social events, and the convention
center might reopen by next January, according to Richer. Beyond
that, a $68 million convention center expansion, financed prior to
Katrina, is still planned for the facility.
There also is optimism for a few
structures and development projects that were feared to be lost in
the storm’s immediate wake.
“There are about 30 condo-hotel
projects under way that will produce more than 10,000 guest rooms,”
Richer says. “In trying to become a tier-one destination, our
criteria is 30,000 area guest rooms, and we’re well on our way. We
hope for 600,000 square feet of exhibit space, all under one roof.
Also, we’ll have significantly more airlift. The last thing is
developing a wide variety of activities and attractions. Some of
the museums will definitely be here, like our earth and space
museum and the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum. Also, Beauvoir [home of
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy] is going to bounce
back. None of the charter boats were hurt. All the golf courses are
open, along with all the spas, entertainment and outdoor
recreation.”
Richer says one area feature is
irreplaceably lost: the thousands of beautiful antebellum, Queen
Anne and Greek Revival-style homes on the National Historic
Register that were reduced to wooden piles.
Yet, say Richer and others involved in
restoring the Gulf Coast, even this tragic loss of national and
local history can be overcome by the people of the area, who
themselves make this destination a friendly, interesting and fun
place to visit. It is left to them to fashion a new future and a
new destination -- with help not just from government workers and
volunteers, but also from tourists, conventioneers and meeting
planners eager to see a vital part of America get back to
business.