Horseshoe Hammond Casino

You can bet on it┬áThe new Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana, is unique in several respects, Indiana president and general manager Rick Mazer explains to Gary Toushek. Rick Mazer learned the casino business the old-fashioned, effective way, by working his way up from near the bottom. He began by training as a table games dealer at the Caesars Boardwalk Regency Hotel, which opened in 1979 as Atlantic CityÔÇÖs second casino.  When heÔÇÖd worked his way up the table games management chain, he decided to learn the marketing side of the business and got into an executive host program of player development. He became a vice president of marketing in Peoria, Illinois; then in late 1995 he moved to the Empress Casino in Joliet, Illinois. He discovered that Empress had received a certificate of suitability for its second casino license, in Hammond, Indiana (the state legalized riverboat gambling in 1993), and a month later he was asked to become general manager there. He took over the Hammond project during the construction of the facility, which was a riverboat in the Hammond Marina. It opened in June 1996 as the Empress Hammond. In 2001 the name of the boat was officially changed to Horseshoe Casino, under the new owner, Jack Binion. Operations continued to flourish, and with the increase in business, demand was created for a larger facility. In August 2008 a new state-of-the-art vessel replaced the original boat.┬á┬á A note about the name: Jack BinionÔÇÖs Horseshoe Gaming Holding Corporation purchased the Empress Casino in 1999, and in 2004 HarrahÔÇÖs Entertainment acquired the Horseshoe, retaining the Horseshoe brand name. ÔÇ£In 2000 Jack Binion talked to me about the potential of the Chicagoland [an informal name for the Chicago metropolitan area; Hammond is located on Lake Michigan, in the northwest corner of Indiana, adjacent to suburban Chicago] casino market,ÔÇØ says Mazer. ÔÇ£We realized that this market was greatly underserved by gaming, and we had a tremendous opportunity to grow our business if we could put the right gaming product in here. We pursued it; we got designs and drawings, then the sale to HarrahÔÇÖs occurred, and those plans were shelved. When the dust settled after the sale and there was a certain comfort level, HarrahÔÇÖs was aware of the project and brought it up, asking us to take another look at it, expanding it to be even larger, and we started to pursue an argument for authorizing the capital.ÔÇØ Mazer and his team worked with (at that time) Anthony Sanfilippo, division president of HarrahÔÇÖs Entertainment, Inc., to assemble a proposal to present to the capital committee of HarrahÔÇÖs, which eventually approved the project in 2005. A number of design firms were interviewed, and the designers of the original Horseshoe Hammond, Friedmutter Group Architecture & Design Studios (which specializes in hotels, casinos and entertainment venues), was awarded the project for the new Horseshoe Hammond. More than a year was spent on the design of the vessel itself, which was broken down into six separate modules that would make up the boat section. The modules were built at three different marine construction facilities (Indiana, Texas and Louisiana) within very precise parametersÔÇöthe tolerance was an eighth of an inchÔÇöin order to line the pieces up tightly.The completed modules were then brought up in sequence by tugboats on the waterway network to the Hammond marina, near the existing casino, which continued to operate. The city of HammondÔÇÖs port authority agreed for safety reasons to close the marina to boaters for the duration of the construction of the new casino. ÔÇ£It was a lot to ask of the city, but they saw the long-term potential of the project and agreed to it. So the onus was on us to complete it in a timely fashion,ÔÇØ says Mazer.The modules were assembled and welded together into an intact vessel hull, which took a year. That may seem a long time, but the law governing casinos in Indiana specifies that not only must they be on water, they must also be navigable. ÔÇ£Even though this casino looks like a building, it actually has engines with the ability to cruise. It canÔÇÖt easily do that, but it could, technically. ThereÔÇÖs one property in French Lick [Indiana] thatÔÇÖs actually a land-based casino designed to look like a boat, but we have a boat designed to look like a building,ÔÇØ Mazer notes.When the lower section of the new Horseshoe Hammond was complete, work began on the structure above the waterline. The connecting componentsÔÇöelectrical, plumbing, ductwork and HVAC, and other mechanical elementsÔÇöwere added as the steel frame went up, which isnÔÇÖt exactly typical, but again, time was a major consideration. ÔÇ£But we had better control over the upper portion, which took another year and a half,ÔÇØ Mazer says, ÔÇ£because it was essentially adding a building onto a boat. During the peak of construction, we had about 800 people working on the site, which wasnÔÇÖt easy because of the water and the innovative design. The fact that this kind of construction had never been done before kept me up some nights; it looked great on paper, but was it going to work? So we were fortunate; the various crafts and trades people involved did an outstanding job.ÔÇØOnce the new casino was built, the old one was closed and moved off to the side to allow the old ramping system to be disassembled and the new one assembled. The new casino was carefully slid into place and tied down. ÔÇ£What we hoped would take seven days actually took ten days, the only time weÔÇÖve been closed.ÔÇØ The old pavilion still operates alongside the new one, the two buildings connected by a door. The floor space of the new casino is 175,000 square feet, and the gaming space is 108,000 square feet, containing more than 100 table games, more than 3,200 slot machines, a Keno lounge and a 34-table World Series of PokerÔÇôthemed poker room (the largest of its kind in the Midwest), plus elegant high-limit gaming rooms. The interior design coloring is consistent with a typical Horseshoe property, with black, gold, cream, and a lot of crystal, including elegant chandeliers.The Asian gaming area is particularly interesting; itÔÇÖs designed by Taki in New York City to appeal to Asian customers. ItÔÇÖs made almost entirely from hand-carved wood from China, including the ceiling, and all the furnishings have symbolic meaning and are arranged for maximum feng shui energy flow. ItÔÇÖs called le cheng (happiness) and emphasizes the lucky number 8, with an octagon-shaped baccarat room off the main room, along with blackjack, pai-gow poker and pai-gow tiles, as well as two private, single-table salons for high-stakes baccarat. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs all done to make our customers feel comfortable and lucky,ÔÇØ says Mazer.An elevator and escalator lead to the second floor buffet area and the innovative 90,000-square-foot theater called The Venue, designed by Montreal-based Sc├®no Plus. It transforms in less than two hours to accommodate anything from intimate performances to larger entertainment productions as well as up to 150 tables for a large-scale poker tournament. Its general admission floor holds 1,500 seats or 2,400 people, for a total room capacity of more than 3,300, plus a 3,500-square-foot VIP area with six box suites, each with three rows of seats and a full-service salon with couches and plasma screens. The acoustics and visual elements in The Venue are first class, driven by the latest technology, and feature three large HD screens that combine lighting with multi-layered video projections that create a range of interactive special effects to deliver a concert-like experience. Bette Midler appeared in The Venue for the casinoÔÇÖs Las Vegas-style million-dollar grand opening, followed by the group Smashing Pumpkins, which attracts a younger crowd. ÔÇ£We wanted to design and build an entertainment facility that would appeal not only to a Las Vegas-style customer but also to a younger than traditional gaming demographic, the 21 to 35 age group, with the excitement of a downtown nightclub.ÔÇØ Along with his many other responsibilities, Mazer is proud to chair HarrahÔÇÖs green initiatives board, named ÔÇ£Code Green,ÔÇØ because green has been written into the companyÔÇÖs code of ethics. ÔÇ£I was honored to be asked to head this initiative because I believe itÔÇÖs important to implement sustainability initiatives at all our properties. For example, weÔÇÖve converted all our diesel vehicles to operate on used cooking oil from our buffets. We also converted the huge gas heaters in our warehouses to run on cooking oil. Most of our lighting is now either new CFC bulbs or fluorescent. The roof of this new casino is white, which saves about 15 percent on our air conditioning cost.ÔÇØ For slot machine technology, Mazer looked at ÔÇ£whatÔÇÖs coming in the future, which is downloadable games. In the recent past if you wanted to change a machine from one game format to another, it required several mechanical adjustments. Today itÔÇÖs a combination of mechanical and electronic adjustments. Soon youÔÇÖll go to a game manufacturerÔÇÖs website, download a game for a fee, and deliver it to a specific machine via fiber optics. So when we realized this, we added fiber optic technology to our already innovative casino design, so weÔÇÖre ready for the future today and have that advantage over our competitors.ÔÇØ An extensive marketing program has brought in the locals as well as a good number of visitors from more than 250 miles away. ÔÇ£Because our casino is so different from anything else in the Midwest, visitors are telling us theyÔÇÖd much rather come here than go all the way to Las Vegas, which is an affirmation of why we put so much work into our design here, to build an entertainment experience that rivals what can be found in Las Vegas, with a closer, more local travel point. An older gentleman said to me recently, ÔÇÿIÔÇÖve been to about 200 casinos all over the world, and quite honestly, this is the nicest one IÔÇÖve been to.ÔÇÖ ThatÔÇÖs just one observation of many. I read all the comment cards, and some of them are a single word: ÔÇÿWow!ÔÇÖ ÔÇØ┬á