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When officials with the company that owns Kenner’s Treasure Chest Casino stepped to the podium at Chateau Country Club earlier this month to detail, for the first time, plans for a new land-based casino to replace their aging riverboat, city officials were ebullient.
“It’s exciting for the city of Kenner,” Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn said.
The Treasure Chest, which opened in 1994 at a berth alongside the Lake Pontchartrain boat launch at the north end of Williams Boulevard, has long been one of Kenner’s key revenue sources. The announcement that the casino would move onto land and expand came months after plans had been unveiled for another ambitious entertainment hub at Laketown, with restaurants, condos and perhaps a sportsbook.
If all the plans come to fruition, city officials hope to turn what is now a sleepy lakeside park next to a 27-year-old riverboat casino into an entertainment destination rather than a place people pass through on their way to the airport.
“It’s an attraction that will not be just for Kenner, but for people outside of Kenner,” Zahn said this week.
An artist’s conception of what the exterior of the land-based Treasure Chest Casino in Kenner will look like.
An artist conception of the plans for the interior of the land-based Treasure Chest casino in Kenner
Laketown has long been a gleam in the eye of city leaders, who hoped to turn the city’s public Lake Pontchartrain frontage into something that both lures visitors and generates funds for the sales-tax dependent suburb. The first big step happened when the Treasure Chest opened, amid sometimes fierce community resistance, as one of the first casinos in the metro area. When it opened, it joined the nearby Pontchartrain Center, built just a few years earlier, as a new breed of attractions in Kenner. But further development has proved elusive.
But in 2018 the state passed a law giving riverboat casino operators a path to move onto land, which cleared the way for the Treasure Chest’s move. Last year, the Kenner City Council approved a new lease that allowed the casino’s move from its current site to what is now the casino’s parking lot.
The new, $95 million casino will be bigger and glitzier, officials with Boyd Gaming, the company that owns the casino, said. There are plans for a steakhouse, a sports bar and a sportsbook as well as twice as much gambling space. Officials expect the new casino to open in late 2023.
For the first time, however, the Treasure Chest might not be alone in attempting to lure gamblers, diners and others to the end of Williams Boulevard.
Atlantis Gaming, also based in Las Vegas, announced plans during a sports celebrity-studded news conference last June for a new “total destination resort” at Laketown. That project, which was pitched as a $450 million, 40-acre development, could have some of its amenites open by the time the dice start flying at the new Treasure Chest, Atlantis CEO Donald Bailey said this week.
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The Atlantis project includes shops, condominiums, dining options and, possibly, gambling. The company plans to apply for sportsbook and daily fantasy licenses from the state, Bailey said.
Atlantis’s said much of its development will be on massive barges moored in the water at Laketown. In order to get permission to put he barges there, the company must first negotiate a long-term lease with the state. Those negotiations have been slowed by the pandemic, but Bailey said a resolution appears close.
“I would think the next month for sure,” he said.
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Atlantis Gaming video on plans for Kenner’s Laketown
Bailey said the company has done some engineering work and surveying at the site. Utility work could begin later this year.
Atlantis officials met with their counterparts from Boyd and the two companies are hopeful that the projects will complement each other.
“We are committed to the Kenner community and are supportive of any effort that will bring new investment and visitation to the area,” Boyd spokesperson David Strow said in a statement. “We think the Laketown area has a bright future as a tourist destination, and we look forward to seeing others join us in making that vision a reality.”
City officials certainly think the two can work together. And if the grands plans come to fruition, it will mark Laketown’s biggest transformation since the Treasure Chest’s opening.
“It’s like the perfect neighbors,” said Candace Watkins, the city of Kenner’s economic development director. With the Treasure Chest getting completely rebuilt and Atlantis’ shiny new center, Laketown could lure people from across the region, but also those who might otherwise only stop in Kenner on their way to Louis Armstrong Interntional Airport.
“I think it’s going to develop some new markets,” she said. “These are exciting things.”
Kenner City Council member Kristi McKinney said the new developments could “create a sense of place” for the Laketown area.
“It would be something that would be a milestone project that would change the trajectory of Kenner as a suburban community,” she said.
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