2008 is shaping up to be a year of big expansions at Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods.
Visitors to both casino-resorts can expect to see large-scale projects completed during this year.
The MGM at Foxwoods, which will be located adjacent to the current Foxwoods facility, is scheduled to be completed in the spring.
Major aspects of that project include a convention center, a performing arts theater, a new casino, and restaurants and retail shops.
Mohegan Sun”™s “Casino of the Wind” is on target for a fall completion. That project will also feature new restaurants and retails shops, and 45,000 square feet of new gaming space. That gaming space will feature a poker room, which Mohegan Sun has been without since it closed the original one in 2003.
Foxwoods is hoping its 115,000-square-foot meetings and convention center that”™s part of the expansion project will become a regional and even national convention draw.
“We”™re looking at national and regional corporate meetings and conventions,” said Saverio Mancini, director of public relations for Foxwoods.
He said several conventions have already been booked for the center.
The MGM Grand at Foxwoods will also feature a new 30-story, 835-room hotel, and a 50,000-square-foot casino.
“Overall, the property will add 2 million square feet to the Foxwoods destination,” said Mancini.
The project will also be the home of several new “celebrity chef” restaurants and upscale retail stores, such as an Apple Store and clothier Dunhill Luxury Goods.
Additionally, the project will have a two-story nightclub that can hold up to 1,100 patrons. Mancini said there is no name for the nightclub yet, but that will be announced later this month.
The final beam of steel was placed this month atop Mohegan Sun”™s new 64,000-square-foot Casino of the Wind.
Casino of the Wind, one of the major components of Mohegan Sun”™s multimillion-dollar Project Horizon expansion, features 45,000 square feet of new gaming space, a 16,000-square-foot Jimmy Buffett”™s Margaritaville restaurant, as well as additional dining and retail options. The new casino is scheduled to open this fall, adding 45,000 square feet of new gaming space and including 826 slot machines, 28 table games and a 42-table themed Poker Room. Currently Mohegan Sun has nearly 300,000 square feet of gaming space.
The Margarataville restaurant will be a multilevel, 16,000-square-foot eatery decorated with tiki huts, palm trees, a 30-foot spinning waterspout and an eight-foot tall blender, an homage to Buffett”™s pop-hit love of Margaritas.
Both casinos could face stiff competition in the coming years from neighboring Massachusetts, which has a proposal afloat to build three casinos in that state.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick proposed licensing three full-scale casinos in Massachusetts last year; a move that he said would generate billions of dollars for the state and thousands of jobs.
The casinos would go in the state”™s western, southeastern and Boston regions
