Casino Aztar pitches entertainment district in Evansville

Wednesday, June 14, 2000 | 3:43 a.m.

Aztar Corp. wants several hotels and restaurants and at least one entertainment venue built near the Ohio River-cruising riverboat casino during the next few years.

The Phoenix-based company has the land for the project, after spending $2.2 million in September to purchase a 7-acre parking lot near the casino. Now it must sell the idea to some hotel and restaurant chains.

Rich Ruden, director of development planning for Aztar Corp., said the entertainment district would capitalize on last October's opening of the $35 million Evansville Auditorium & Convention Centre.

"In any facility that we own, we always try to grow the project, and that means looking at ways of bringing in new customers, repeat customers and creating a regional draw for our facility, and we do that for all of our venues," Ruden said by telephone from the company's other Casino Aztar, in Caruthersville, Mo. Aztar Corp. also operates casinos in Las Vegas and Laughlin in Nevada and in Atlantic City, N.J.

The company envisions 500 new hotel rooms, divided among perhaps three big-name chains, to complement the 250-room hotel now at the casino complex.

Ruden has been contacting hotel, restaurant and entertainment venue operators for three or four months, hoping to encourage the first to build within a year. Another hotel should go up one to three years after that, he said.

"This is our vision of expanding our facility in downtown Evansville to achieve that goal," Ruden said.

One idea Aztar Corp. is exploring is a NASCAR-themed entertainment venue, or something else "with some kind of hook" to interest residents of southwestern Indiana, western Kentucky and southern Illinois, he said.

Within the past year, company officials have fretted about the opening of the giant Caesars Indiana riverboat casino near Louisville, Ky., and the decision by Illinois lawmakers to allow dockside gambling on that state's floating casinos.

However, Aztar Corp.'s fortunes, as well as the fortunes of its Evansville boat, have rebounded in recent months. Ruden declined to comment on Casino Aztar's fluctuating revenues.

He would say, however, that conventioneers will need places to stay in the coming years. "That's why we're pitching this project," he said. "Additional hotel rooms will be required downtown."

Hotel occupancy in Vanderburgh County is hovering at 60 percent to 65 percent right now, said Dolli Kight, executive director of the Vanderburgh County Visitors & Convention Bureau. She said it was hard to predict if the market can bear another 500 hotel rooms.

The county currently has between 3,800 and 3,900 hotel rooms, with many more on the way.

"It depends on how the convention market develops over the next couple years," Kight said.