Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awards licence for mini Parx Casino
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board approved a licence for a subsidiary of Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment to build the Parx facility in Shippensburg Township, Cumberland County.
US.- The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has voted unanimously to award a licence to Parx Casino operator Greenwood Gaming & Entertainment to construct a Category 4 casino in Shippensburg Township, Cumberland County. The operator will build the state’s fourth mini-casino.
The 73,000-square-foot casino, which will occupy about half the former big-box store, will be a scaled-down version of Parx’s casino in Bensalem, the state’s top casino by revenue.
A $65m construction project will begin next month, and the facility is scheduled to open in November, John Dixon, Greenwood’s chief operating officer, told the gaming board during a hearing in Harrisburg. The casino will contain 500 slot machines and electronic table games such as blackjack, baccarat, and roulette, but only with remote dealers. The Bensalem flagship casino has more than 3,000 slots.
The award concludes a process that began on February 22, 2018 when Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment won an auction held by the gaming board with a $8.1m bid for the Category 4 licence. The company filed an application with the board later that year to locate a newly constructed facility just off Exit 27 of Route 81 but later amended the application to place the casino at a former Lowe’s Home Supply store in the Shippen Town Center in the same municipality.
The board conducted an in-depth background investigation of the application along with the collection of public input from citizens, community groups and public officials at hearings held in Shippensburg Township on March 25, 2019, and then on May 20, 2021 following the applicant’s change of location of the proposed casino.
Prior to its vote, the Board held a final licensing hearing in which representatives of GW Cumberland were questioned by members about the project.
A Category 4 Slot Machine License permits the operation of between 300 and 750 slot machines. The operator can also request permission to initially operate up to 30 table games for an additional fee of $2.5m, with the capability of adding an additional 10 tables games after its first year of operation. That table games certificate was also approved today by the Board at its public meeting.
The facility, which will be non-smoking, expects to create 175 construction jobs. When the venue opens its doors, Parx Casino Shippensburg expects to have more than 125 full-time equivalent permanent jobs. The casino also plans to offer sports wagering in the future.
