What is stopping LA from putting Casinos on the coast and in Lake Ponchatrain

The state limits casino licenses. It's dumb. They allow them on land now but still limit the amount.

Subsidence

Jesus

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It’s not big business and hasn’t been for years now. Casinos are struggling across the country.

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There's definitely a slump going on because of the economic slump.

But the "destination (resort)" Casinos do okay... the one in New Orleans on the edge of the French Quarter does okay.

A lot of them that aren't heavy hitters with all sorts of stuff to get people from elsewhere to come stay there for a few days tend to just suck money out of the local poor population.

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What is stopping LA from putting Casinos on the coast and in Lake Ponchatrain

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That’s on the legislature.

After Katrina they should have let Casinos build on Canal in New Orleans and made it like the strip in Vegas. The casinos would have basically paid for the rebuilding of the city while simultaneously loading the city up with more tax revenue.

They had them before.

Treasure Chest was originally in Lake P, but it made sense for them to move onshore so they wouldn’t have to worry about a hurricane messing up a boat or dock.

Also, before Amelia Belle moved to St. Mary Parish, it was the Belle of Orleans and had a Stars and Stripes theme because it was located on Stars and Stripes Boulevard near Lakefront Airport. Katrina damaged the boat and it had to be moved to Mobile for dry dock repairs. While the repairs were being done, the choice was made to move it to St. Mary Parish as the New Orleans Casino market had become saturated with the Harrah’s, Treasure Chest, and Boomtoom taking a majority of the Casino market. The Belle of Orleans was black sheep of the market and with a potentially smaller market after Katrina and a depleted workforce in New Orleans East, they felt it was time to move. So, in order to move, voters in St. Mary had to approve riverboat gaming again and the vessel moved to a dock in Bayou Boeuf on the St. Mary Parish side of Bayou Beouf.


The name Belle of Orleans lives on as Amelia Belle is in name only. Most of its vessel licenses and gaming licenses bear the Belle of Orleans name. Actually, Bet 365’s online sports betting license in Louisiana is listed as the Belle of Orleans. Boyd Gaming is hoaring out the name because in order for you have an online license in Louisiana you have to have a host casino. Despite this, if you place a sports wager at Amelia Belle your wager is through their FanDuel licensed sports book and not Bet365.


Also, numerous attempts have been made to place a casino in St. Tammany in Slidell and voters turned it down or developers pulled the plug.

Are all 15 “riverboat” licenses even in current use?

Every time there's been a local option election to allow casinos on the Northshore it's lost overwhelmingly. The bloom is off the gambling Rose and people see it for what it is. A trashy vice that provides little in the way of economic benefit. What economic activity it generates is cannibalized from other businesses.

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The state limits casino licenses.

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Licenses are for friends, family, and benefactors.

It's why we still don't have casinos in Alabama. Every year the bill gets shot down because it doesn't grease the right palms. The 2024 bill was going to pass out ten licenses (more than the previous bills, but 7 of the licenses were for electronic games only). They got enough friends and family involved in that one to pass the house and fail by one vote in the state senate.

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The state limits casino licenses. It's dumb. They allow them on land now but still limit the amount.

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I am for lifting the cap and expanding areas where it is allowed. For some reason, they exempted portions of the intracoastal between Jefferson and St. Mary parish. Meaning Terrebonne and Lafourche would be ineligible for gaming boats. Maybe they would be navigation hazard when boats were required to make cruises.

When local option was voted on, Terrebonne was included because a small inaccessible area touches the Atchafalaya River where gaming would be allowed. This was in 1996 and it failed, I believe, but if you put it on the ballot now it would pass. Now that the issue of having to cruise is no longer an issue and facilities are allowed on land as long as they are close to approved gaming areas.

I could see a casino in Lafourche or Terrebonne as an underserved gaming market. Maybe Amelia Belle would do better in a centralized location in the bayou area since it competes head to head with Cypress Bayou in western St. Mary.


In my mind, a centralized Amelia Belle could be reimagined as the Bayou Belle with a resort/hotel with a 18 hole golf course, concert/meeting venue, RV park, and offer expanded dining options on a land based facility. Right now it is land locked to a dock with limited expansion options and getting there takes you through a residential neighborhood. Sometimes when I pass on 90 and look over to the parking lot, it is a ghost town.


As part of any potential Louisiana expansion of gaming, I would like to follow Mississippi’s lead though. The state should open up licenses to an unlimited number, but you have to have some sort of resort destination built around the casino. That would naturally limit the number of casinos to be built as you are talking about construction of a several hundred million dollar to a billion dollar resort.

Mississippi put those rules in after the spectacular failure of the Margaritaville Casino that was built in Biloxi. It was just a casino no hotel with a restaurant or two in a terrible location off the beaten path in the back of Biloxi. They also seemed to lack a cohesive business plan with a terrible rewards programs and a lack of comps. By the time management realized their mistakes, the damage was done, and it shut down. There was even talk of a KISS (the band) themed casino there but it was withdrawn.

There has always been a few new announced projects looking to come to the coast in Biloxi and Diamondhead. There are two now in Biloxi. But somehow, the projects get the initial excitement of the announcement, and then they fall flat. The project gets withdrawn for various reasons due to cost, location constraints, potential demands of the Mississippi Gaming Control Board for a certain type of resort, or the existing casino lobby does a number on the MGCB to keep new competitors out the market.