Hollywood Slots at Bangor begins to install machines

The first tractor-trailer loads of slot machines began arriving Friday morning at Hollywood Slots in Bangor, set to open next month in the former Miller’s Restaurant building on Main Street in Bangor.

“This is a great day for us. I’m thrilled that things are moving ahead so quickly,” Jon Johnson, general manager for the company’s Bangor operations, said Friday while overseeing the delivery of the first wave of the 475 slots ordered for the interim slots facility.

A $17 million transformation of the site is nearing completion.

Johnson said the Bangor slots facility, the only one of its kind authorized by state and city voters, remains on track for a November opening, though a firm date has yet to be set.

“I’m not ready to jump off the cliff yet, but I’m teetering on the edge,” Johnson said in regards to the grand opening.

The Bangor facility, like several other Penn National gaming properties, will have a Hollywood movies theme. Because of relatively low ceiling heights in the former restaurant, it likely will be decorated with movie posters and similar items.

“Once all of our games are in place, we’ll probably add more memorabilia,” Johnson said, adding that larger pieces are planned for the $75 million permanent facility Penn National plans to build for 1,500 slots at or near city-owned Bangor Raceway.

With a little over a month before show time, the project is advancing on many fronts, Johnson said. The interior has been gutted and given new finishes, including carpets, tile and paint. An elevator has been installed. The wiring is essentially done, and 120 surveillance cameras have been installed.

Outside, the copper colored roof is being painted bright blue, exterior walls will be a neutral shade of beige, and the window trim will be done in green. The tall marquee out front, now turquoise, will be painted in matching colors, Johnson said.

Parts of the facility have been given names consistent with the theme. These include Chairman’s after “Chairman of the Board” Frank Sinatra of Rat Pack fame, Lancaster Lane after Hollywood icon Burt Lancaster, and Rodeo Drive after the shopping strip of the stars.

“We wanted to come up with names to go with the Hollywood theme and wanted to have fun with it,” Johnson said.

An advertising jingle is in the works, though Johnson said he had not heard it yet.

In addition, a staff of more than 120 full-time employees, ranging from surveillance and security workers to slot attendants and wait staff, have been hired, with many of them coming to Penn by way of a job fair earlier this month at the Bangor Career Center.

Not all of the workers were local hires. At least two employees of Penn National’s hurricane-ravaged Boomtown Biloxi Casino and Casino Magic-Bay St. Louis, both in Mississippi, have chosen to relocate to Maine to work at Hollywood Slots, Johnson said.

Friday morning found Johnson and Assistant General Manager Steve Lambert overseeing the unloading of dozens of slots. Each machine was numbered and assigned to a corresponding spot in the facility’s gaming areas on two levels of the Hollywood Slots building.

“It’s more spacious than we thought it would be,” Lambert said of the facility’s interior, which once housed Miller’s famous all-you-can-eat buffet and function rooms. The space allowed for nearly 10 feet of clearance between the banks of slot machines.

The games, which cost $12,000 each, come in denominations ranging from 5 cents to $5, and have the traditional lever, Johnson said.

But don’t bother stockpiling your quarters. The slots at Bangor are “ticket in-ticket out,” or coinless, he said. Coinless slots work much like traditional slot machines, but with players inserting paper money in exchange for credits.

Once players are ready to move on, the slot machine prints out a paper ticket with the dollar amount of a player’s winnings instead of coins. The ticket can be inserted into a new machine or cashed in.

As crews moved the slots in Friday, gambling opponents continued to collect signatures in hopes of forcing a 2006 vote to outlaw slots in Maine.

Facing a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline to submit more than 50,000 signatures to state elections officials, organizers of the slots repeal effort on Friday said it was “too close to call.”

As of Monday, No Slots for ME! had 25,000 verified signatures and another 10,000 in hand, according to the group’s spokesman, George Rodrigues.

The anti-slots signature drive is spearheaded by the Maine Grassroots Coalition, which also helped gather more than 57,000 signatures for the current “people’s veto” effort aiming to overturn Maine’s gay rights law.

Paul Madore, who heads the coalition, said Friday that while “there wasn’t as much steam behind” the anti-slots effort, he noted that petitions were coming into his offices at a good clip.

“If we’re going to make it, it’s going to be a squeaker,” said Madore, noting that the anti-gay rights measure received 12,000 signatures in the final 12 hours to put that repeal effort on the 2005 ballot.

When learning of the slots’ arrival in Bangor Friday, Madore said, “Well, they can move them in. That way they’ll know how to move them back out.”

Bangor Daily News reporter Jeff Tuttle contributed to this report.