Tag: sierragold

The Sierra Gold casino project, which was first announced last February, got approved by the Carson City Planning Commission yesterday. This new casino will be located at the corner where Hwy 50 meets the new freeway. If it's all built as planned it will end up as the largest hotel-casino in Carson City. With a 100,000 square-foot casino, and an 8-story, 220-room hotel. The tip of the hotel tower will be eight feet higher than the Ormsby House, making it the tallest building in town. And there will be about a thousand employees on the property.

But now, the project just got approved and already they're looking to delay it. The economy's not really good enough right now to build a project of this size, so they want to put it off for a year or two, or three, or four. So it could be some time before we actually see any earth being moved at that corner.

So I guess the question that needs to come up soon is exactly how many casinos does Carson City need? We have Bodine's, which is quickly hurtling towards completion at the south end of town. We have Jethro's Casino, which is working its way through the approval process. And even though it's in Douglas County, Carson City is the target market for that resort. Ditto for Gold Town, which is planned for the Carson Valley right at Sunridge Drive. And of course we have the Ormsby House, which if all of us cross our fingers and wish really hard should be finished and open just before the heat death of the universe.

Now add to that Sierra Gold, a new project being proposed for where Highway 50 meets the Carson City Freeway. This new casino will supposedly be the "largest in Carson City", 107,000 square feet with a casino, restaurants, 220 hotel rooms, a conference center, and a parking garage. It's being built by Golden Gaming, a company that owns several bars in Reno and Vegas, plus a couple of casinos in Colorado.

So, does Carson City have enough of a base to support all these new casinos? Are casinos alone going to be enough to bring in the tourists? How well is Gold Dust West, which is located just on the other side of the freeway, going to take this news? And with Sierra Gold, Gold Dust West, and Gold Town, just how many casinos named "Gold" do we need?

Update: Another Nevada Appeal article on the planned casino.