Building to start at slots site

BANGOR – Construction will begin this week on Penn National Gaming Inc.’s $131 million gaming and hotel complex.

Excavation and earthwork at the Hollywood Slots at Bangor project site, across Main Street from Bass Park, are complete, spokeswoman Amy Kenney said Saturday.

Rebar reinforcement for the parking garage and hotel is slated to be delivered to the Main Street construction site today, barring any storm-related problems, Kenney said.

She said work crews expect to begin pouring concrete for the main gaming facility next Monday.

The new facility, slated to open in mid-2008, will replace the company’s interim facility, which opened with 475 slots in November 2005 in the former Miller’s Restaurant, just up Main Street.

Plans for the new Hollywood Slots include, among other things, a 116,000-square-foot gaming facility featuring up to 1,500 slot machines, an attached four-story parking garage for 1,500 vehicles, and a seven-story hotel.

It also will include a new simulcast facility for off-track betting, a 350-seat buffet restaurant, a 125-seat specialty restaurant, two smaller private dining rooms, and a small cafe offering lighter fare, as well as retail space and a full-service bar with entertainment.

The new racino will be huge by Bangor standards. It will take up most of the 8-acre site that Penn National acquired last year at a cost of about $7 million. The site once housed the Holiday Inn-Civic Center, the Main Street Inn, several houses and a few small outbuildings.

To give a sense of its scale, Kenney earlier said that the gaming floor and “back of the house,” or area for support operations, will be roughly the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

According to Kenney, the contract for building the complex was awarded last week to Cianbro Corp., the Pittsfield-based construction company that also handled the demolition of the hotels, houses and other structures on the site, paving the way for the new complex.

Cianbro was tapped to convert the Miller’s building into an interim slots facility and make improvements to the grandstand at Bangor Raceway.

Cianbro’s Red Webster and Jon DiCentes will serve as project managers, according to Kenney.