DiamondJacks Casino Could Reopen After Failed St. Tammany Parish Election

DiamondJacks Casino inwards Bossier City, La., mightiness follow making a comeback. The casino’s owner, Peninsula Pacific Ocean Entertainment (P2E), was forced to temporarily shutter its Louisiana gambling casino inwards Mar 2020 on body politic orders to armed combat the escalating COVID-19 pandemic.

Just two months later, P2E said it would not reopen the commercial-grade riverboat. The society opted to relocate its LA gaming license to a more attractive market.

Those efforts, however, were deemed unsuccessful during the Dec 11 local election inward St. Tammany Parish. P2E had proposed edifice a $325 1000000 gaming and leisure destination called Camellia Bay Resort in Slidell on Lake Pontchartrain.

Gambling is prohibited in St. Tammany, which meant parish support past right smart of a local referendum was required to earmark P2E to proceed with Camellia Bay. But parish voters rejected the casino during the delayed election held this past tense weekend.

P2E claimed casinos on the MS Gulf Coast were responsible for the many “Vote CasiNO” signs that sprang upwards across the parish in the days before the special election.

P2E is a Los Angeles-headquartered gaming and hospitality firm.

Gaming Board Requires Action

St. Tammany voters rejecting Peninsula Pacific’s development efforts inward the parish means gaming must soon restart at DiamondJacks. If it doesn’t, P2E is at danger of forfeiting its state-issued gaming permit.

The Pelican State Gaming Control Board (LGCB) inwards September passed a resolving that would have allowed P2E to go its Bossier City gaming licence to Slidell, should St. Tammany voters welcome the development. But since locals rejected the motion, the LGCB ordinance compels that gaming recommences on base the DiamondJacks riverboat gaming watercraft — formally known as the Blessed Virgin Margaret — “within 60 days of the election.”

That means DiamondJacks, or some other named casino on the Madonna Margaret, must restart gaming trading operations on or before Feb. 9, 2022.

LGCB Chair Ronnie Jasper Johns says P2E cannot sell its gaming license. Currently, the companion has only if deuce effectual options: reopen DiamondJacks or a unexampled casino on the Blessed Virgin Margaret, or cede the gaming license.

“I counter they will reopen DiamondJacks. The gameboard may give them a little more clip than the 60 days to catch back upward and running,” Jasper Johns explained.

Reopening DiamondJacks won’t follow an light task. P2E inwards Oct of 2020 held a flaming sale of the resort’s assets, including kitchen and restaurant equipment, furnishings from the 560 hotel guestrooms, lighting fixtures, linens, ice machines, and china.

DiamondJacks inward Rough Times

DiamondJacks Casino opened as Isle of Capri Bossier City inward 1994. Developed and opened by Isle of Capris Casinos Inc., the Bossier City riverboat was sold in 2006 to a local entity called Legends Gaming, which renamed it DiamondJacks.

Legends was unsuccessful as a gaming operator, and DiamondJacks racked up to a greater extent than half of a one million million dollars inwards debt. The companion entered failure inwards 2012, and various creditors took hold of the gambling casino that year.

P2E acquired DiamondJacks inward 2016. But the rundown riverboat failed to vie with higher-end properties inward Bossier. Isle of Capris Casinos Inc. was sold to Eldorado Resorts — the present-day Caesars Entertainment — in 2017 for $1.7 billion.