Washington casino to add sports betting, new hotel and two restaurants

Four years after the indian tribe opened its 400,000 square foot $510 million Ridgefield Casino, the Cowlitz announced the opening of a 14-story, 300-room hotel a few feet from its ilani Casino Resort.

It will feature a fitness center, spa and salon, it retractable wall pool, a cabana by the pool, a bar in the lobby and a restaurant on the top floors with views of the Columbia River. The hotel’s exterior will be made of blue glass, as homenage to the surrounding rivers and according to Suzanne Couture, vice president of Friedmutter Group the hotel architect, it will also include nods to the tribe’s culture reports the Longview Daily News. 

Owned by the indian tribe and operated under a management agreement with members of the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut, which owns the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, the hotel has been planned since the inauguration of the casino and is scheduled to be completed in 2023. 

A separate project in the casino has also been under construction as well. A 90-seat Asian sports bar and restaurant is scheduled to open at the casino in July. According to Ilani’s Casino President and General Manager Kara Fox-LaRose, said project includes an expanded gaming area with an addition 200 slots and a gaming pit.

The casino also announced it will add sports betting to its gaming options, however the official date of when bets can be made at the ilani Casino has not yet been set. In 2020, betting on certain sports at casinos owned by federally recognized tribes became legal in Washington state.

Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment Interim Chief Executive Officer Ray Pineault said the hotel will create nearly 200 jobs.

Additionally, Ridgefield Mayor Don Stose said the hotel will attract state athletic championships that previously turned down playing at the city’s new sports complex due to a lack of local lodging options.

The Cowlitz Vice Chairman Dave Barnett said: “Everyone in Cowlitz, this is yours, this is your land, this is your building, it can help members who are still in need so we can all get to a level of comfort because I personally have seen so many of the hardships”. He also added that the hotel will help members who lost jobs from the pandemic or other reasons.

Opened in 2017, the casino today counts with 2,500 slot machines and 75 gaming tables. Its plans were years in the making and applying for federal recognition took decades and hundreds of pages of documentation, until the tribe was officially recognized in 2000. However it wasn’t until 15 years later that the members finally secured the 152 acres for their ilani Casino, this was after facing opposition from Clark County, La Center card rooms and The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.