Proposed Greene County casino developer: We’re different than Cedar Rapids

The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission is back at it today as it ventures to Jefferson in Greene County to tour the site of the proposed Wild Rose Jefferson casino.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett is following the development, though Steve Gray, lead investor in the proposed Cedar Crossing Casino in Cedar Rapids, says he is not.

The commission's visit to Jefferson is similar to the commission's April 3 visit to the site of the proposed Cedar Crossing Casino across the Cedar River from downtown Cedar Rapids.

Two weeks later, the commission denied the Cedar Rapids proposal a state gaming license on a 4-1 vote.

Wild Rose Entertainment in West Des Moines, is the developer of the proposed Greene County casino, and on Wednesday, Tom Timmons, Wild Rose's president and chief operating officer, said Cedar Rapids' failure to win a state gaming license has no bearing on what the Racing & Gaming Commission is going to decide about the Greene County proposal when it meets in Burlington on June 12.

'I haven't forgotten about it,” Timmons said of the commission's vote on April 17 to deny the Cedar Rapids casino a license. 'But I don't think it's related to ours. I never have.”

He said the investors in the Cedar Rapids casino project emphasized that their project was an 'urban” casino while the Wild Rose Jefferson casino is similar to the company's other casinos in Emmetsburg and on the edge of Clinton. Both have hotels, event centers and a restaurant, he said.

Timmons said the commission also has viewed the Cedar Rapids and Jefferson projects as distinct ones from the start. The formal presentations, site visits and final votes all have come at different times for the two projects.

'They never said we're going to handle these projects together,” he said.

However, the Jefferson casino project, like the Cedar Rapids project, must face two market studies conducted for the commission that recommended against new casinos and said new ones would cannibalize business from existing ones.

The studies, though, say that a Jefferson casino will not take a significant amount of business from any one casino, while the studies said a Cedar Rapids casino would harm the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort.

One of the casinos that would lose some business to a Jefferson casino is the casino in Emmetsburg, which also is owned by Wild Rose Entertainment.

Timmons said Wild Rose's Jefferson casino would not hurt the Emmetsburg one, but rather both casinos would benefit from certain economies of scale and shared services, he said.

'We definitely would never put a casino in that would be a detriment to another one, and that would include our own,” he said.

Timmons said Isle of Capri ran both the Davenport and Bettendorf casinos in the Quad Cities until recently, while Harrah's now runs two casinos in Council Bluffs without problems.

The proposed $40 million Jefferson casino will feature 14 table games and 500 slot machines and include a 71-room hotel.

This compares to the $174-million Cedar Rapids casino project with 840 slot machines and 25 table games.

Cedar Rapids' Corbett on Thursday repeated that the Racing & Gaming Commission 'missed it big time” when it denied Cedar Rapids a casino license.

Corbett said he will be watching to see if the commission looks more favorably on Wild Rose's Jefferson project than the Cedar Rapids one and if Wild Rose's status as an existing casino operator in the state might play a role. The Cedar Rapids project came without an existing casino operator.

Corbett said he wants to see if other existing casino operators turn out in Jefferson today to object to Wild Rose's proposal or if existing casino companies give Wild Rose 'a pass.”

All of Greene County has 9,000 people, Corbett said, which he said is the number of people who live within a mile of the Cedar Rapids casino site.

Timmons said the Greene County casino will be a regional one, and he said representatives from the surrounding six counties are expected to express support today in Jefferson.