Bangor slots project price jumps by $40M

BANGOR – The price tag for Penn National Gaming Inc.’s permanent slots complex has jumped from $90 million to $131 million, according to a year-end financial report released Thursday.

Penn National Chairman and CEO Peter Carlino attributed the roughly $40 million increase to higher construction costs and the addition of a hotel.

“With the impressive results being generated by our temporary facility [on Main Street] and a substantial number of patrons driving significant distances to Hollywood Slots at Bangor, we are adding a hotel to the plans for the permanent facility,” Carlino said Thursday during a conference call and webcast from Penn National’s corporate headquarters in Wyomissing, Pa.

That Hollywood Slots at Bangor’s budget now includes money for a hotel bodes well for the project, City Manager Edward Barrett said.

“We’re just pleased that everything is moving forward and that the company is proceeding with the hotel,” he said.

Though he did not yet have enough data on which to project property tax revenues from the permanent complex, Barrett expected the finished product would “carry a significant [assessed] value.”

The permanent gaming complex, which is to replace the company’s interim facility in the former Miller’s Restaurant on Main Street, will be located just down the street, across from Bass Park, home of Bangor Raceway. That’s where the company operates commercial harness racing and off-track betting.

The new facility will feature a two-story, semicircular, glass tower casino area, a seven-story hotel, a four-story parking garage, restaurants, retail space and a new simulcast facility for off-track wagering, according to design plans Penn National representatives have shared with the city.

Though the company’s state gaming license allows it to operate up to 1,500 slot machines, Carlino said the permanent facility initially will house 1,000 slot machines – more than double the 475 slots available at the temporary Hollywood Slots at Bangor site. Plans call for adding more machines later.

“Like our facility at Penn National Race Course [in Grantville, Pa.], we have designed the permanent Bangor site to accommodate future expansion, including up to 1,500 gaming machines,” he said.

Referred to as the Riverside Block in legal documents relating to the project, the 8-acre site Penn picked for the permanent facility encompasses all of the land between Lincoln and Dutton streets and from Main Street to the railroad tracks along the Penobscot River. It is scheduled to open in mid-2008.

Jon Johnson, general manager of Penn National’s Maine operations, said last month that construction of the new facility will begin this spring, after the now-closed Holiday Inn-Civic Center and a few other remaining buildings are demolished.

Another hotel, the Main Street Inn, and two houses were razed last summer.

The former hotel properties, across the street from Bass Park and Bangor Raceway, were among the few commercially zoned parcels large enough to accommodate Penn’s permanent facility within the 2,000-foot radius of Bangor Raceway, as required by state law.

Penn National negotiated to acquire the parcels making up the block from their owners for a total of about $7 million.