Biloxi developers will try again to build a casino at former Tivoli Hotel site
Twelve years after Coast developers proposed a $1 billion casino at the site of the former Tivoli hotel in East Biloxi, the same developers are proposing a $400 million casino with a conference center there.
Posted on the city’s website Thursday was an announcement that Biloxi Capital will ask for site approval for the 30-acre property just west of the yacht club on U.S. 90. It was purchased for more than $40 million in 2005 or 2006.
The legal notice says the resort will have 100,000 square feet of casino space, 2,000 slot machines, 75 table games, a 1,300-room hotel and 100,000 square feet of convention space.
“They have submitted a notice of intent,” said Allen Godfrey, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission. “The next step would be application for site approval,” he said.
Coast developer Danny Conwill with Biloxi Capital also was involved in trying to build a casino at the Tivoli site in 2007. He later built Felix’s Oyster House in Gulfport.
The casino project never went to the Gaming Commission for site approval.
Earlier this week came the announcement that members of the rock band KISS are partnering to develop a new Rock & Brews casino in East Biloxi. The $200 million casino would have a 300-room hotel, a fine dining restaurant, a 40,000-square-foot or larger casino and a parking garage, along with a unique amenity the Gaming Commission requires to grow the market.
Last December, the city and local developer BBR Biloxi paid for a study to determine if another convention center would be viable in East Biloxi. That report by Conventions, Sports & Leisure International said 70,000 additional room nights could be created by a convention center. It recommended a site on Oak Street as the most viable location.
BBR Biloxi agreed to invest as much as $250,000 toward the study, suggest sites — and if it proved feasible — move forward with a $150 million “world-class, waterfront, mixed-use convention center and retail project.”
The Tivoli site is in that area, bordered by Holley Street on the west, Biloxi Yacht Club on the east and Howard Avenue on the north.
Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich said this site “is in the very heart of the East Biloxi waterfront area where the city has focused its development efforts.”
Key to this development, the mayor said, is for the Mississippi Gaming Commission to grant site approval.
This story was originally published November 14, 2019 at 2:58 PM.
