Rocky Gap

Maryland Live! Casino at Arundel Mills will have its grand opening at 10 p.m. June 6, casino officials announced Thursday morning. The grand opening still requires approval by the Maryland Lottery, which will oversee a trial run to take place before June 6. The announcement comes as the state slots commission on Thursday considers a bid to open a casino in Rocky Gap, in Western Maryland, by Evitts Resort LLC. The commission also has yet...

As a sometime visitor to Atlantic City casinos because of rebates, comps and free rooms, I know Maryland has to find a better way to get better activity than building more casinos. Just look at Atlantic City and its struggle with the casinos it has. There are too many and volume of gambling is down - otherwise, they wouldn't give rebates and free rooms. If we go ahead and build more casinos than what has been agreed to, owners and customers will not receive their best value. Leave well enough alone and go for the time being with Ocean Downs, Arundel Mills, Perryville, Rocky Gap and the future Baltimore City casino and see what happens.

Members of Maryland's slots panel, worried that neighboring states are enhancing their casinos, recommended Friday that lawmakers allow table games like blackjack and poker at the five slots locations voters have approved. "It is apparent we are well behind the curve," Commissioner D. Bruce Poole said at a slots commission meeting Friday. "We are running catch-up with other states." The commission's decision came hours after a key vote by Delaware lawmakers to allow dice and card games at their gaming facilities.

Hoping to turn around the struggling resort, Maryland's slots location committee awarded a license Thursday for a casino at Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort in Allegany County. The Video Lottery Facility Location Commission voted unanimously to issue the license to Evitts Resort LLC, the sole remaining applicant after the panel eliminated a group led by former Democratic Party Chairman Nathan Landow in January. The license is contingent on Evitts getting construction financing, but company officials do not expect that to be a problem.

Is it fair to lower the costs of establishing a casino at Rocky Gap and continue the outrageous fees charged to those operators who already went out on a limb to get something going in Maryland ( "Slots panel wants to make Rocky Gap more attractive," Jan. 12)? I don't think so, but it confirms the lack of business experience of the politicians and governor of Maryland. F. Cordell, Lutherville

In response to The Sun's editorial on Western Maryland slots ( "Don't give up on Rocky Gap," Nov. 14): The better approach is to forget the site. There is a message when, for the second time, there was not a single submission. The site was a poor selection from the start. Rocky Gap is not a resort. It is one of Maryland's premier campgrounds, which my family and I love. My former fellow delegate, Casper R. Taylor Jr., as a representative of Allegheny County and as speaker of the House, used his political muscle to have a lodge and golf course placed on parkland.

Rocky Gap, the state-owned resort hotel in Western Maryland, has gorgeous views. It has a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. It has special deals on its restaurant meals — kids under 10 staying there eat free. What it doesn't have is an operator who wants to run a slots casino there. So Maryland lawmakers are doing what sellers do when they are having trouble luring buyers: They are sweetening the deal. This week, the Maryland Senate passed a measure that would cut the state's take on gambling revenue from the site to 50 percent for 10 years, rather than the 67 percent that operators of other Maryland casinos pay. The Senate deal-making did not stop there.

Maryland's slots commission threw out a bid Friday by former state Democratic Party Chairman Nathan Landow to build a casino at Rocky Gap, leaving a single offer in play for the Western Maryland resort. The decision concerning one of Maryland's five casino sites came as lawmakers sparred over the idea of expanding gambling to a sixth location and allowing table games as well as the current slot machines. Donald Fry, the state slots commission chairman, said Landow's group failed to provide necessary financial and business data to support its bid. "We were never provided the full, detailed plan," Fry said after the commission voted 6-0 at a meeting in Annapolis to reject the bid. "Landow Partners is rejected for having deficiencies" in its proposal.

The shouts of "fore!" echoed from the valley towns of Western Maryland to celebrate the completion of a $10 million equity commitment that means golfers could be lining up by 1994 to try out their irons and woods on a Jack Nicklaus signature 18-hole course at Rocky Gap near Cumberland.Along with the golf course will come a 240-room hotel and conference center that figures to be quickly filled by corporate and government groups. The golf-and-conference combination could pump some vitality into the sagging spirits of Maryland's Appalachian region.

It has been a long and frustrating journey for backers of a golf course and conference center at Rocky Gap State Park designed to boost the economy of Western Maryland. After seven years of controversy in Annapolis and years of searching for developers, backers are within $2 million of their goal. But that last piece of the puzzle is proving elusive. Unless financial angels step forth by Sept. 1, the $48 million project will unravel.Members of the state's business community should not let that happen.

Maryland's slots commission threw out a bid Friday by former state Democratic Party Chairman Nathan Landow to build a casino at Rocky Gap, leaving a single offer in play for the Western Maryland resort. The decision concerning one of Maryland's five casino sites came as lawmakers sparred over the idea of expanding gambling to a sixth location and allowing table games as well as the current slot machines. Donald Fry, the state slots commission chairman, said Landow's group failed to provide necessary financial and business data to support its bid. "We were never provided the full, detailed plan," Fry said after the commission voted 6-0 at a meeting in Annapolis to reject the bid. "Landow Partners is rejected for having deficiencies" in its proposal.

— One group that wants to open a casino at the Rocky Gap Lodge and Resort envisions amenities including five restaurants, a spa, a golf and tennis academy and an automobile museum. The other promises to invest $62 million to build a 50,000-square-foot gambling palace and stresses that its team has the experience to get the job done. Representatives of the two competing bidders descended on the long-struggling Western Maryland resort Tuesday afternoon and presented plans to transform a state-backed development failure into a revenue-generating casino.

The state slots commission voted unanimously Wednesday to throw out bids by some developers seeking to build casinos in Baltimore and Western Maryland, saying the applications failed to provide minimum requirements. Caesars Entertainment, which has proposed a 3,750-machine gambling palace for Baltmore, is now the only applicant for the city slots license. Two groups are left to compete for the license at state-owned Rocky Gap Lodge and Golf Resort in Allegany County. Greg Miller, a spokesman for Caesars, said in an email that his group is "proud" to have assembled an "exceptional" team and expects to build "another outstanding Baltimore attraction.

Through the first three years of the state's slots program, the opportunity to build a casino in Baltimore drew only one bidder — and that investor was disqualified after failing to make payments and meet deadlines. But now the city slots license is being sought by an eclectic — and well-heeled — group that includes a powerful mix of Baltimore entrepreneurs and national names. Headlined by Caesars Entertainment, the partnership includes NBA team owner Daniel Gilbert, Baltimore health care pioneer Michael Bronfein and former Rouse Co. executive Anthony Deering.

Three years after the voters authorized an expansion of state-sponsored gambling, Maryland finally got what the system was designed to produce: a competition between developers over who would provide the best deal for taxpayers in exchange for a precious video lottery terminal license. But as with everything so far in Maryland's slot machine gambling program, there is a catch: The competition is over a license at Rocky Gap, the smallest and almost certainly least-profitable slots location in the state, a turkey of such magnitude that nobody had bothered bidding there at all until the state sweetened the terms for developers there.

Caesars Entertainment Corp., the world's largest casino operator, applied Friday for the license to run the slot machine parlor proposed for Baltimore, while three developers will compete for the opportunity to run a casino in Western Maryland. Caesars submitted a bid for a 3,750-machine casino on Russell Street in Baltimore. The location drew another bidder, Baltimore City Casino LLC, but the company did not submit the required $22.5 million initial license fee and is likely to be disqualified, state slots commission Chairman Donald C. Fry said.

In golfing parlance, the state of Maryland has finally hit onto the green and is about to line up its putt. That's how close the state is to completing its arduous attempt to build a championship golf course and conference center at Rocky Gap State Park, east of Cumberland. It's a project that could give Western Maryland a much-needed boost.Efforts to locate a golf course at Rocky Gap began over 10 years ago. Ever since then, supporters have spent as much time in the rough as they have on the fairways.

It has taken three governors and 12 years, but it looks as though there could be a concrete deal on developing a golf course and conference center at Rocky Gap State Park near Cumberland by the end of this month.No one, though, is claiming victory. There have been so many unexpected setbacks and detours that the Rocky Gap saga at times resembles "The Perils of Pauline" cliffhanger movie serials. It is entirely possible another obstacle may surface when bids are opened.The most recent hangup is that Western Maryland construction companies haven't exactly broken down the Maryland Economic Development Corp.

Two developers say they are planning to submit bids Friday to operate a casino in Western Maryland, and the head of the state slots commission said there are "multiple people interested" in the Baltimore slots license. Developers with ambitions to run a casino in Maryland must show their cards Friday, the deadline in the state's third and, officials hope, final round of bidding for licenses. Still on the table are two venues — the casino planned for Russell Street in Baltimore, intended to be the state's second-largest, and a smaller operation at the troubled Rocky Gap Lodge & Golf Resort in Western Maryland.

A state panel sweetened the terms Wednesday for bids for the slots licenses in Baltimore and Rocky Gap. The states slots commission voted unanimously to give the winner of the Baltimore license a two-year window to decide whether to buy nearby land, instead of expecting the winner to buy the parcels up front, which officials said was implied in the existing terms. Land for a parking garage still would have to be purchased immediately. The recommendation was among several proposed by the quasi-public Baltimore Development Corp.