What’s next for Silver Slipper after demise of Slidell casino? A $75M plan gains steam.
“They knew that it was a crap shoot,” John Ferrucci, general manager of Silver Slipper Casino, said of the developers who on Saturday lost the election that would have let them build a $325 million casino in Slidell, Louisiana.
St. Tammany Parish voters turned out in force and 63% voted against a casino on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, near the twin spans of Interstate 10.
Three days after the vote, Ferrucci was in Slidell for a business club meeting and said, “Everybody we talked to today is just relieved this is over. It really did drive a wedge through the parish.
Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, known as P2E, bought the land for about $14 million in February. The California company spent $6 million in incentives and a donation to Hurricane Ida victims to court the voters.
The developers blamed Mississippi Coast casinos in part for the loss.
“We had obviously been watching it very closely and talking to people on both sides,” Ferrucci said of the election.
“We picked up a few extra billboards,” he said, to get the Silver Slipper name out there in the parish.
Slipper Casino in Hancock County is only 25 minutes east of Slidell, and he said other casinos are 25 minutes away in Louisiana. Voters chose not to put one in their backyard, he said.
Loss is gain for Silver Slipper
Full House, parent company of Silver Slipper, announced plans to build a second, $75 million hotel tower and spa over the water, before the pandemic hit. With no casino competition in Slidell, the project becomes more necessary to accommodate customers.
“Our hotel is just sold out all the time,” Ferrucci said. The original tower has 129 hotel rooms right on the beach. The second tower will add 176 more for a total of more than 300.
“That’s the right size for us,” he said.
Blue Bayou restaurant will move to the new tower, he said, making room for another restaurant, possibly Italian or Asian.
Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and Department of Environmental Quality have approved the hotel project and filling a portion of the marshlands , Ferrucci said. Now the casino operator is working through the process with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Corps assigned a project manager, he said, but all pending applications are temporarily on hold to determine how changes to the federal Water Quality Act will be carried out.
Meanwhile, Hancock County is working to make Silver Slipper more accessible. A $7.2 million bond issue will pay to elevate Lakeshore Road leading to Silver Slipper so the street won’t flood near the casino.
Ferucci dealt with controversy in 2020 when a video went viral showing casino workers being escorted from work in an emergency vehicle during storm surge from Tropical Storm Cristobal. The casino changed it’s emergency plans shortly after the storm.
What’s next for Slidell developers?
Only 15 of the parish’s 170 precincts favored the casino in last week’s election, The Advocate reported.
Ferrucci says he doesn’t think another vote in St. Tammany will come anytime soon — if ever. P2E has a short deadline to decide what to do next.
Louisiana Gaming Control Board gave the developers two months — until Feb. 9 — to decide whether to reopen its Diamond Jacks Casino in Bossier City or surrender its license to the state. Unlike Mississippi’s unlimited casino licenses, Louisiana limits the its licenses to 15.
P2E closed Diamond Jacks Casino, one of the poorest performing in the state because of competition from Oklahoma when operations were suspended at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Diamond Jacks shut down in May 2020 instead of reopening with the other casinos, and the kitchen equipment and other fixtures in the casino were sold.
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 5:50 AM.
