South Beach Casino in Hancock County wins site approval from Gaming Commission
South Mississippi could have another contender to become the 13th casino on the Coast.
On Thursday, South Beach Casino & Resort was granted site approval by the Mississippi Gaming Commission. It was a unanimous decision by commissioners Tom Gresham and Francis Lee.
Kent Nicaud, CEO of Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, has been nominated to the open spot but has not yet been confirmed.
Kirk Ladner of Diamondhead and Russell Elliott of Bay St. Louis requested the site approval for the Hancock County property at 6081 South Beach Blvd. in the Clermont Harbor development and Lakeshore area of Hancock County.
Ladner said at Thursday’s meeting they proposed the nearly 4-acre site shortly before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and then put the plans on hold.
“This is the first time that the commission actually considered and approved it,” said Jay McDaniel, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.
Next step
Site approval is just the first step toward building a casino at the site, McDaniel said.
There is no deadline for developers to move forward from site approval to building a casino, he said.
The deadline clock starts ticking once the developers take the next step and apply for and get approval to proceed, a rigorous process that would require them to show they have the funding to complete the casino and get all the required amenities on the compact site.
Once approval to proceed is granted, the developers have three years from that date to build the casino.
Here’s the plan
This is the third casino site in about two miles of the beach in western Hancock County. The 3.93 acre property is east of Silver Slipper Casino and adjacent to a 98.5-acre site owned by Cure Land Co. that got site approval but hasn’t yet been built. The sites are just west of Buccaneer State Park.
Another South Beach Casino was proposed in 2008 at Veterans Avenue and U.S. 90 in Biloxi and went before the Gaming Commission several times for site approval.
The required legal advertisement in the Sea Coast Echo says South Beach Casino & Resort LLC anticipates the resort will have 40,000 square feet of casino space, 1,100 slot machines, 25 table games and 6 poker tables.
The Gaming Commission requires all new casinos on the Coast to have 300 hotel rooms, at least 40,000 square feet of casino space, a fine dining restaurant and an amenity designed to offer something that will grow the local casino market.
South Mississippi has 12 casinos across Harrison and Hancock counties, and several more are proposed in Biloxi, D’Iberville and Long Beach.
There would be twice that many on the Coast, but more than 20 casino developers who got site approval since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 haven’t been able to pull together the financing to build their casino resorts.
