Posted on: August 30, 2024, 12:11h.
Last updated on: August 30, 2024, 12:11h.
The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission (IRGC) during its Thursday meeting at the Riverside Casino & Golf Resort decided on two gaming consultancies to carry out market research probes regarding the feasibility of allowing a casino resort in Linn County.
The state commission that regulates casino gambling, sports betting, and horse racing picked The Innovation Group, a Colorado-based global gaming consultancy specializing in market analysis and feasibility, and Marquette Advisors, a Minnesota-based real estate consulting firm that has a hospitality division with a focus on casino gaming.
Four consultancies bid for the opportunity to examine how a casino in Linn County, specifically, in Cedar Rapids, would impact the state’s current 19 commercial casinos. A group of local businesspeople in Iowa’s second most populated city has been seeking a gaming license for a resort development for more than a decade.
Moratorium Lifted
The IRGC heeded calls from Iowa’s riverboat and brick-and-mortar casino industry in both 2014 and 2017 to deny gaming concession bids for Linn County. The industry argued that Iowa’s gaming market was already oversaturated.
Iowa lawmakers in 2022 placed a two-year moratorium on the IRGC’s ability to grant additional licenses after neighboring Nebraska authorized racetrack casinos. Iowa’s two-year moratorium, however, expired at the end of June.
The Cedar Rapids Development Group and its nonprofit arm, the Linn County Gaming Association, have since filed a third application for a casino bid for a roughly $250 million resort project called Cedar Crossing on city-owned land. The Cedar Rapids City Council has agreed to sell the roughly 25-acre site to the development consortium should it procure a state gaming concession.
The investment group is partnered with Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E), a Los Angeles-based gaming operator. Anne Parmley, president of the Linn County Gaming Association, the project’s charitable arm that would collect 8% of the casino’s gross revenue and direct that money to nonprofits and community organizations throughout the region, says the 2024 Cedar Crossing Casino bid is its best yet.
This application only builds on past applications, all the time and commitment that the operating partner, Peninsula Pacific, has had to Linn County and Cedar Rapids over the years,” Parmley said. “It’s an opportunity to refine and improve. It’ll be a great contribution to the vitality of Cedar Rapids and Linn County entertainment.”
Iowa’s gaming law requires that casinos only be licensed with a qualifying sponsoring nonprofit charitable organization that benefits from the gaming operation with a minimum of 3% of the facility’s gross casino win.
Bid Timeline
The IRGC gave The Innovation Group and Marquette Advisors a Dec. 30 deadline to submit their Cedar Rapids market feasibility studies so commissioners can review the results over the holidays.
The Gaming Commission will make the reports public sometime before Jan. 23, 2025. The IRGC will then vote on whether to approve the Cedar Crossing Casino application during its Feb. 6 meeting.
State lawmakers representing counties where casinos are operating are expected to reignite their fight to reimplement the moratorium on new gaming licenses when the Iowa Legislature convenes on Jan. 13, 2025. There would be just 16 session days for a new prohibition on gaming concessions to become law before the IRGC would vote on the Cedar Rapids project, assuming the market feasibility conclusions come back favorably to the development.
