[Southsider2k12]

What will be interesting is when this starts to affect the tax revenue coming to MC and to LPCo. Everyone acts like they expected this, which they should have, so hopefully they are expecting and planning for the inevitable funds shrinkages.

http://heraldargus.com/archives/ha/display.php?id=385398

Blue Chip attendance, revenues down for August
09/17/2007, 11:13 am
Comment on this story

Scot Squires, 1-866-362-2167 Ext. 13869, ssquires@heraldargus.com


Officials expected hit after opening of Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, Mich.

MICHIGAN CITY -- Blue Chip Casino saw a dip in revenue and attendance in August, Four Winds Casino’s first month in operation in New Buffalo.

August attendance of 253,824 was down by nearly 54,600 gamblers from the month prior and by nearly 33,900 people compared to August 2006.

August revenue of $21,293,570 dropped by $5,445,941compared to the previous month and by $3,108,720 compared to August 2006.

Boyd Gaming, which owns Blue Chip, was expecting the hit.

“Well, certainly when you add a new competitor to that market, and you add a couple of thousand slot machines in that market, that will be an impact to Blue Chip,” Boyd Gaming President and Chief Operating Officer Keith Smith said during an August conference call.

“It is natural customers will want to check out the new place on the block. But we are confident our customers will come back,” Boyd Gaming Spokesman David Strow told The La Porte County Herald-Argus Friday.

As a way to bring those gamblers back, Blue Chip is currently spending $130 million to expand its facility, which includes constructing a 300-room hotel.

“Once that expansion opens, we will be in a better position than ever (to compete),” Strow said.

Ed Feigenbaum, editor of Indiana Gaming Insight, gave Blue Chip credit for being proactive.

“Knowing Four Winds was coming, Boyd Gaming folks did their best to compete,” he said. “They’ve done everything right in the long run. In the last month or two, Blue Chip has upped their marketing efforts.”

Feigenbaum believes the two casinos can both be successful in the same area.

“The markets seem to expand when a new casino comes to town,” he said. “All the boats seem to absorb the new competition.”

[Roger Kaputnik]

Planning ahead? Huh??

[Southsider2k12]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...;ArticleID=5897

Building A New Skyline
Final height of structure will be about 100 feet above current construction tower.

Amanda Haverstick
The News-Dispatch

MICHIGAN CITY - The skyscraper Blue Chip Casino is building is up to the fourth floor and growing.

The construction crane tower rises to what would be the 18th floor of the planned 22-story hotel. Blue Chip officials said the top of the hotel will be about 100 feet above where the construction tower is now.

Blue Chip executives on Thursday revealed further plans for the $130 million hotel and adjoining convention center during a preview.

"This is an exciting process. (The project is) slated for completion in late 2008 and everything is right on stage for that," Blue Chip Vice President and General Manager Ted Bogich said. "When this project is completed, (it) will give us the largest hotel capacity of any casino in Northwest Indiana."

The new tower will feature 242 rooms and 60 suites. The existing eight-story hotel has 168 rooms and 16 suites, giving Blue Chip a total of 486 hotel rooms. Part of the tour included a visit to a mock up of a hotel room that Blue Chip has built in a city warehouse.

The 408-square-foot room includes a 40-inches flat-screen television, wireless Internet connections, a large bathroom and dark wood trim with contrasting carpet and curtains.

Work on the tower is expected to move rapidly, adding about a floor a week for the next 20 weeks or so.

The hotel is expected to be topped off in April.

Bogich said the convention center, which will seat around 1,200 people, will be the largest in La Porte County. The convention center will be built just to the north of the hotel tower.

Architect Lucien Lagrange, principal of Lucien Lagrange Architects in Chicago, designed the 286-foot-tall tower with varying shades of blue glass to take advantage of how the sky and lake would reflect on the building.

"We wanted the tower to be nice looking. Imagine this tower in glass, in the sky. It's going to reflect the sky, it's going to reflect the clouds," Lagrange said. "The transparency is like a diamond in the sky. It will become a landmark in the city. I think it will be a new birth for the location and the city."

Lagrange is known for classically-inspired mixed-use, hotel, residential and retail designs. In Chicago, they designed the Hard Rock Hotel and the Blackstone Hotel.

"We do work all over the world ... but this one will be outstanding," said Lagrange. "We were faced with a challenge. They really wanted the best. I think we were pushed to really deliver something that will be outstanding."

The structure, said Lagrange, is on the cutting edge of design in the hotel industry.

"Doing it in Michigan City will really change the perception and vision of what Michigan City is," Lagrange said. "It will be an outstanding building. I think we should be proud of that."

Mayor Chuck Oberlie said the project will offer great opportunities for the city.

"The conference and convention center offers great opportunity for the community to take advantage of and the tower itself (will) attract people," Oberlie said.

The mayor said he could not have anticipated seeing such a project 10 years ago when Blue Chip opened the doors to its first boat.

"Probably not to this scale," Oberlie said. "I think that we were very optimistic that we might at some point in time ... have some kind of a small conference facility that would handle a few hundred people, but 15,000 square foot, no I don't think so."

Construction began early in the spring.

"You're starting to see the super structure of the existing hotel," Blue Chip Assistant General Manager Gary Sawina said. "What were proud of is how we've been able to take Lucien's circular design of the entryway and we've been able to tie his design into the existing building as well as the new building. That's always very difficult to do from a design standpoint - to integrate the two facilities."

Sawina said the new porte cochere will be four times larger than their existing porte cochere.

"We wanted to make sure our guests, as they're leaving the building, that they have the ability to stay inside," Sawina said.

Along with this design will come extensive construction. In order to make the least amount of inconvenience for their guests, Blue Chip official came up with a temporary valet entrance.

"During the next five months we're going to experience a very, very complicated sequence of construction in which we're going to start coming around the north side of the tower and working our way south into the front entrance," Sawina said.

Eventually, the casino's main entrance, along with the stop light on U.S. 12, will move east about 300 feet. The date for the project will depend on coordinating the casino's plans with the work schedule for the Indiana Department of Transportation.

"There's some coordination with INDOT. We anticipate doing our curb cuts in early spring," Sawina said. "We're anticipating that change would happen sometime between late August through early November. It's based on logistics."

Contact Amanda Haverstick at ahaverstick@thenewsdispatch.com.

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...;ArticleID=5898

Drop-Off In Attendance Is Not A Concern For Officials
General manager believes the market is large enough for Blue Chip and Four Winds.

Rick Richards
City Editor, The News-Dispatch

MICHIGAN CITY - Ted Bogich doesn't seem concerned in the least that attendance and revenue at Blue Chip Casino was down in September, the second full month since Four Winds Casino Resort opened 15 miles away in New Buffalo, Mich.

Bogich, the vice president and general manager of Blue Chip, said the company wouldn't be investing $130 million in a 22-story hotel and convention center if it was worried.

"Overall, we feel the market is large enough to absorb both us and Four Winds," Bogich said Thursday after a tour of the construction site where the hotel tower is going up alongside U.S. 12.

According to figures from the Indiana Gaming Commission, Blue Chip's attendance was 225,337 in September, down from 253,824 in August. Both months were down from 2006, with 283,768 people visiting Blue Chip last September and 287,661 going through the turnstiles last August.

Revenue in September was $18.4 million, down more than $5.5 million from September 2006.

It also was the first time monthly revenue dropped below $20 million since January 2006. In August, revenue was $21.2 million, down about $3.2 million from August 2006.

Until the August opening of Four Winds, revenue at Blue Chip was on par with 2006, and from May through July, monthly revenue was ahead of 2006 by nearly $4 million. Since Four Winds opened in early August, monthly revenue has taken a hit.

Bogich said competition isn't a concern for Boyd Gaming, the Las Vegas-based parent company for Blue Chip. He said that with the competition Boyd Gaming has in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, a competing casino 15 miles away isn't a major problem.

He said it's common that for a few months after a new casino opens, that other casinos in the area will see a decrease in attendance while customers see what all the fuss is about.

"We prefer to take a long-term view," Bogich said. "As additions come online, it makes both casinos more appealing."

Bogich said he has visited Four Winds to see for himself what is offered there. He said it is a different atmosphere than what is offered at Blue Chip.

"Some people like the big casinos like that. We offer a more intimate atmosphere and some people like that," he said. Also, he said the rustic design of Fours Winds will be attractive to some people while others will find the more contemporary design being created at Blue Chip more pleasing.

During Thursday's construction site tour, Bogich explained that if Boyd Gaming wasn't confident in the La Porte County market, the company would not have invested $170 million in a new casino boat two years ago or be building the hotel tower that's now under construction.

In 2006, monthly attendance topped 300,000 four times in the first nine months. This year, monthly attendance has topped 300,000 only twice, most recently at 308,396 in August when Blue Chip was running a special promotion to coincide with the opening of Four Winds.

[RexKickass]

Blue Chip has been so strong for so long because it didn't really have any competition. It was the closest casino to Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids, South Bend and pretty much anyone within 100 miles east of MC.

Now that there's another casino in town, they'll be doing well, just not as phenomenal as they have been doing.

[Southsider2k12]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...amp;TM=58786.95

Blue Chip Hotel
New Hotel A Skyscraper

Editorial

The details announced by Blue Chip Casino this past week about the $130 million, 22-story hotel tower and convention center now under construction have huge ramifications for Michigan City.

It is a mind-boggling project. And while Boyd Gaming, the parent company for Blue Chip Casino, routinely puts together projects like this, it is without a doubt one of the single most important construction projects ever to take place in the city.

When the Blue Chip hotel tower is complete, it will permanently alter the city's skyline. While it's hard to image how tall a 22-story building will be, take a look at the construction crane in place now and add 100 feet. That's how tall the tower will be.

Architect Lucien Lagrange of Chicago explained that the tower will be encased in various shades of blue glass to better reflect the sky and Lake Michigan. The curved building will also make it one of the most unusual hotel designs anywhere.

But beyond the hotel, Blue Chip is adding a 1,200-seat convention center that will have a permanent stage that will be used for Las Vegas-style entertainment. There also will be an 8,500-square-foot restaurant built near the entrance to the existing eight-story hotel.

Additionally, the entrance to the casino will be moved 300 fee to the east, offering visitors a grander view of the complex as they approach the entrance.

The project underscores Boyd Gaming's commitment to Michigan City. Two years ago, the company completed a $170 million casino boat that more than doubled its gaming space. With this project, it means the company has committed more than $300 million to the community even in the face of increased gaming competition.

Ted Bogich, vice president and general manager of Blue Chip, said the company's philosophy is to focus on the long term, something that bodes well for the city. He said that if Boyd Gaming wasn't confident in the city's and the area's economy, it would not be making the investment it has made.

Those are encouraging words for the city.

Our Opinion
The Issue: Blue Chip's new hotel, to be open in about a year, will change the skyline.

Our Opinion: The hotel and conference center will also change Blue Chip from merely a casino to a tourist destination. The 22-story hotel will have a dramatic look and tower over every other occupied building in Northwest Indiana. The expansion is encouraging for Michigan City.

[Southsider2k12]

http://www.dailysouthtown.com/business/622...ruction.article

High rollin'
Blue Chip and Harrah's plan bigger and better casinos

October 29, 2007

Construction continues on the site of the new Blue Chip Casino Hotel in Michigan City.
(Lisa Schreiber/Post-Tribune)
Meanwhile in Michigan City, Blue Chip officials led visitors on a hard-hat tour of the 22-floor hotel tower that is part of a $300 million expansion.

.....

In Michigan City, expectations are high with plans to make U.S. 35 more inviting with new streetscaping and other aesthetic improvements for customers going to the more glamorous complex.

"I think it'll have a very positive impact for us," said Michigan City Mayor Chuck Oberlie on Thursday during a guided tour of the construction that began in the spring.

The third floor of a 22-story hotel is under construction, easily making it the tallest building in LaPorte County, It will be slightly curved.

Its aluminum and glass exterior in varying shades of blue will reflect the ever changing sky conditions, not to mention the spirit of the casino's location by the lake.

Architect Lucien Lagrange said the building will "become a landmark, a rebirth of this location in the city."

In addition, work is about to begin on laying the foundation for a 15,000-square-foot convention center with a capacity to hold 1,200 people and room for entertainment.

The Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana

[JHeath]

Architect Lucien Lagrange said the building will "become a landmark, a rebirth of this location in the city."

Sure, it's good for that location. Now what about the rest of the City?

[RexKickass]

You can't look at Boyd Gaming to save the rest of the community. The next step is in the city's hands and finding some good developers to bring it attractive downtown retail. Maybe they could work with a company like Madison Marquette....

[JHeath]

You can't look at Boyd Gaming to save the rest of the community. The next step is in the city's hands and finding some good developers to bring it attractive downtown retail. Maybe they could work with a company like Madison Marquette....

Very true. But it sure seems like we could have done more over the past 9-10 years that Blue Chip has been in our City than we have. It would be nice to see some decisions and progress made instead of study after study. Don't you agree?

[Roger Kaputnik]

Depends on the decisions.

[Ang]

Very true. But it sure seems like we could have done more over the past 9-10 years that Blue Chip has been in our City than we have. It would be nice to see some decisions and progress made instead of study after study. Don't you agree?

Oh, IDK. The lights down at Wash Park sure are pretty at Christmas. People come from all over to see those lights. That is river boat dollars at work, you know.

[Southsider2k12]

Very true. But it sure seems like we could have done more over the past 9-10 years that Blue Chip has been in our City than we have. It would be nice to see some decisions and progress made instead of study after study. Don't you agree?

The key has been, and will always be, diversification to survive the different business cycles of different industries. Michigan City tied themselves exclusively to manufacturing for a long time, and when it collapsed in the 70-80's, so did our economy. It wasn't until we moved into tourism that we have begun to rebound. Now the next step to take those gains, and find other things that Michigan City is good at, so if anything happens to tourism, we have something else to fall back on. We must learn from our mistakes.

[JHeath]

Oh, IDK. The lights down at Wash Park sure are pretty at Christmas. People come from all over to see those lights. That is river boat dollars at work, you know.

Considering the amount of money coming into the City from the riverboat, the dollars being spent on the holiday lights is not that much.

I realize that a lot is spent on infrastructure improvements, but with areas inside of MC still being without City water and sewers, I still see a lot of room for improvement.

[Roger Kaputnik]

Weren't there lights before the Casino was here? And this is a great spot for recreation, only if the lakefront and other areas like the TC Corridor are kept open and not built over with CON-Doughs. Someone may get rich doing that, but the MC will have been royally screwed, if you will permit me to use that kind of language.

[Ang]

I was being very sarcastic on the christmas lights remark. I'm suprised your keyboard didn't get wet with all the sarcasm dripping off that remark.
Roger, the lights may have been there before, but I think it was only the canopy along the driveway and a few small displays. It got bigger when the boat came. I remember a sign up one year that said, "Your river boat dollars at work."

I also agree with Jenny that the money could be used in far better ways than it has been.

[Roger Kaputnik]

Keyboard was ok, but screen shorted out.

[Ang]

Keyboard was ok, but screen shorted out.

[Southsider2k12]

http://www.post-trib.com/business/642862,casinonos.article

Casino numbers tumble

November 9, 2007
By Michelle L. Quinn Post-Tribune correspondent

A month of turmoil in October took a toll on Northwest Indiana casinos, most of which posted lackluster numbers over the previous year.
Blue Chip in Michigan City took an especially large hit, both in revenues and number of visitors, according to the Indiana Gaming Commission's monthly report.

The casino, which is facing competition from the newly opened Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, Mich., had 58,316 fewer customers go through its turnstile compared to last October, and saw revenues drop

$5 million, from $22.7 million last October to $17.7 million.

Keith Smith, chief operating officer for Blue Chip parent Boyd Gaming in Las Vegas, said Four Winds has had a negative effect on Blue Chip.

Resorts East Chicago and Horseshoe Casino Hammond also saw big drops.

Resorts lost $6 million from last October, going from $28.2 million to $22.5 million. Its turnstile count was more than 40,000 less than last year, at 267,006 compared to 307,427.

Horseshoe Casino's turnstile count was up almost 12,000 visitors over last year, but its revenues suffered a hit, bringing in $27.7 million last month versus $37.6 million last year.

Slots were on par, but Horseshoe reported an almost $900,000 loss in gaming table activity compared to $10 million in revenues last year.

Majestic Star II was the only casino to post a modest increase, with $9.6 million, compared with $8.8 million in 2006.

Majestic Star also held its own with $10.4 million, versus $10.5 million last year.

Ed Feigenbaum, of Indiana Gaming Insight, said October usually not a strong month.

[Southsider2k12]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...;ArticleID=6463

Blue Chip Blames Layoffs On Competition From New Casino

The Associated Press

Competition from a tribal casino that opened this summer in southwestern Michigan has led Blue Chip Casino to lay off employees, a spokesman said.

Blue Chip, on Lake Michigan, began laying off 6 percent of its workforce Friday, said David Strow, a spokesman for parent company Boyd Gaming.

Strow attributed the layoffs to competition from the Four Winds Casino about 10 miles away in New Buffalo, Mich., which opened in August.

Blue Chip increased marketing efforts to limit the impact of the new casino on attendance and revenues, Strow said. But attendance in August was down by about 54,000 and revenues were down by about $5.5 million compared to the previous month.

"This was a last resort," Strow said. "This was a very difficult decision."

Strow did not say how many employees were affected, but Michigan City Mayor Chuck Oberlie said the casino employs about 1,100, which would put the number laid off at between 60 and 70.

"I don't know that it was totally unforeseen," Oberlie said Friday. "With the Four Winds, a small adjustment could be expected."

Strow said employees who are laid off would be given first preference when hiring begins next year for the casino's new 22-story hotel, part of a $130 million expansion.

"We're obviously aware of the impact to employees, and we will take steps to assist them," he said. Of the casino's future, Strow said: "We're still very optimistic for the prospects long term at Blue Chip."

[Roger Kaputnik]

Oh, boy, the union is gonna pitch a fit over the layoffs!