PGA Tour Golfer Zach Johnson Involved in Cedar Rapids Casino Pitch
PGA Tour golf player Zach Johnson, the 2007 Edgar Lee Masters and 2015 Open Championship victor and an IA native, is lending his make and similitude to a cassino resort hotel adjure targeting Cedar Rapids.
Despite Hawkeye State lawmakers utmost calendar week going a two-year moratorium on young casino licenses, a grouping of community of interests businesspeople are moving forward with an sweat to establish a $250 gazillion gaming terminus on the west side of meat of the Cedar River inward Cedar Rapids. Johnson, who was born inwards Hawkeye State City but raised in Cedar Rapids, is supportive of the gambling casino connive that is being called Cedar Crossing.
The 12-time PGA Tour winner plans to follow involved with the cassino by path of “The Clubhouse past Zach Johnson,” a sportsbook, taproom, and sports waiting room concept.
I am proud to be parting of a externalise that testament mean value so much to the biotic community through chore creation, the revitalization of the downtown area, and for its commitments to the not-for-profit organizations inwards Cedar Rapids,” Andrew Johnson said.
Iowa’s riverboat and land-based casinos are subjected to a graduated task ranging from 5% to 22%. The last value is dependent on for each one property’s add receipts gaming revenue. While to the highest degree of the task money goes to the state, a small per centum is earmarked for nonprofits inward the casino’s legion community.
Casino Market Capped
With minuscule notice, Ioway lawmakers finally hebdomad decided to place a two-year moratorium on allowing the Hawkeye State Racing and Gaming Commission to go forth unexampled gaming permits. Iowa’s commercial-grade gambling do passed in 1994 does non demarcation the identification number of casinos that can follow authorized.
The state’s 19 casinos hold been urging lawmakers to crest the market place for many years. Cedar Rapids was denied a gambling casino permission in both 2014 and 2017. State gaming regulators rejected bids to permit a gambling casino inward Iowa’s second-largest metropolis on concerns that a Cedar Rapids cassino would negatively wallop gaming trading operations at Ise Casino Hotel Battle of Waterloo some 50 miles north.
The Cedar Rapids Development Group was responsible for the 2014 and 2017 bids, as advantageously as the current unity involving Johnson. They say the commonwealth has wrongly denied the city a gambling casino and the economical benefits gaming provides.
“It’s time that Cedar Rapidians infer what is genuinely at stakes here. It is certainly entertainment and amenities, and it’s jobs. It is economic development and it is deluge protection,” said Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell.
The Cedar Rapids Development Group’s a la mode(p) cassino plan includes incorporating a flood lamp wall. The direct site for the Cedar Crossing cassino was where the Charles Herbert Best horse opera Peter Cooper Mill hotel sat until it was devastated by flooding in 2016. The hotel was demolished inward 2017, and the urban center has owned the vacant land since.
Cedar Crossing Details
The in style(p) Cedar Rapids casino contrive proposes a 160,000-square-foot gaming and entertainment coordination compound with around 1,000 slot machines and 50 tabular array games. The resort pattern to boot includes a 1,500-seat concert venue and a eating place from a celebrity chef.
The Cedar Rapids Development Group says its casino would ideally bring forth a existent acres din on the west face of the river. The gambling casino backers believe the cassino would bring forth as a great deal as $7 one thousand thousand every year for local nonprofits.
But for now, the casino’s near-term fate rests with IA Governor Kim Reynolds (R). Her business office says the regulator is reviewing the two-year gambling casino permit moratorium. If she signs the bill, no new Ioway casino licenses testament follow granted until at least June 1, 2024.