Visitors to Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff can start betting on when they will be able to book a room at the new hotel or a conference at the event center (spoiler alert: in about two years). The long-awaited addition to the casino is visibly underway, and the framing for the event center is complete.
Carlton Saffa, chief market officer at Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff, said he stopped making projections about when the project would begin because there were so many false starts. Now, he said, the construction speaks for itself.
“Notably, we did not do a groundbreaking for phase 2,” he said. “This is a $220 million project, approximately, and people would think we’re crazy not to have a golden-shovel groundbreaking for a $200-plus million investment, but after all of the, ‘Oh, we’re about to start. Oh, we’re going to start now,’ we thought, ‘Hell, we’ll just let the construction speak for itself.’”
When the project is complete, he said, Saracen will be home to a 400,000-square-foot addition that includes an event center that can hold 1,600 people or 1,000 for a seated dinner, along with a 13-story hotel tower with 326 hotel rooms, about half of which will be suites.
The concrete, steel and framing visible today represent $50 million worth of site preparation and construction, he added.
“What is there now is significant,” he said. “Somebody said, ‘The cranes are here,’ and I said, ‘Those are the little cranes. Wait until the big cranes get here to build the hotel tower.’”
At $220 million, the budget for the project far exceeds the initial budget of $150 million. Saffa said price increases caused by the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible to fulfill the original vision within the original budget.
“Once we recognized that we would never meet our initial cost projections, we had a fork in the road, which was to dilute the entire project to the original price or build the hotel and event center that we always wanted,” he said. “I’m so glad that we went with the latter.”
It was not just the costs that affected the construction timeline. Uncertainty within the banking community caused hesitancy when it comes to large construction projects, Saffa said, adding that the failures of Silicon Valley Bank in California and Signature Bank in New York contributed to a rattling of the banking world.
Supply-chain snarls and never-before-seen lead times on construction materials, in addition to the higher cost of goods, joined with the banking uncertainty and health uncertainty to make phase 2’s debut a ballad of starts and stops, he said.
Of course, Saracen is no stranger to uncertainty. Phase 1 of construction, the casino itself, finished in October 2020, during one of the darkest times of the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.
“It was a crazy time,” he said. “It was a particularly crazy time for us to be building an 80,000-square-foot gaming floor, and the total price tag for phase 1 was about $330 million dollars invested by the Quapaw Nation, and it was a really scary time because if you remember what things were like back then, we didn’t really know if we’d return to normal.”
However, Americans are once again frequenting restaurants, hotels and, yes, casinos, and it has paid off in a big way at Saracen. In December, the casino resort saw its second-best gaming month in history, and its online sportsbook, BetSaracen, is now the 14th-largest sportsbook brand in the U.S., Saffa said.
“From our core product, which is gaming, we’re hitting on all cylinders,” Saffa said. “It’s just been this albatross that we’ve been carrying about finishing the project that we have been committed to.”
He added that he expects the hotel to be the nicest in the state.
“We’re blessed in that I think we’ve got an incredible team here,” he added. “When we set out to make something good, it usually ends up being great.”
He pointed to the success of Red Oak Steakhouse, which has received numerous recognitions as the state’s best restaurant and boasts chefs who cut their teeth at such acclaimed establishments as the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. and the Alotian Golf Club outside of Little Rock.
“Our hospitality strength is amazing,” Saffa said. “Our primary business is gaming, but we’re really good at hospitality.”
Saracen will mostly use the event center to host concerts, Saffa said, and the center will also be available for conventions, parties, reunions, black-tie galas and more.
“That building will have a permanent stage in it, so if we wanted to bring the type of act that would come to Simmons Arena, a really top-notch act with all of the rigging and all of the curtains and all of the show that comes with an act like that, we’ll be able to do that,” he said. “It’s not a temporary stage that we roll out. It’s not an afterthought stage, and to build a stage correctly with the capability to do all of this, you have to do it from the beginning.”
Other features of the event center will include retractable seats built into the walls that can provide theater-like seating and air walls that can subdivide the room as needed, he said, adding that the center will be able to meet a range of needs.
“Could you have a black-tie charity gala here and sit 1,000 for a dinner? Yes. Could you have a top-40, everybody-knows-him-and-listens-to-him-on-the-radio country music act here? Yeah, and we will, and it will be super cool because you’ll be talking about seeing him in what is a fairly intimate environment,” Saffa said.
The hotel is set to rival new properties on the Las Vegas Strip, he said, adding that it will feature premium materials such as natural stone, as well as high-quality furniture, bedding and art.
“When we reached a point that there was no way we would hit that original $150 million budget, we simply refused to dilute the project,” he said. “We could have cut the project down in scale, and we could have cut back significantly — you know, use fake marble instead of real, use laminate instead of wood — but that’s the kind of decision that makes sense now but you regret in the future.
He said that the benefits of the hotel are two-fold: Existing customers, 70 percent of whom are from Little Rock, can spend more time gaming by turning their day trips into overnight stays, and the casino resort will be able to market to more out-of-state guests. Saracen has already demonstrated its prowess in drawing visitors from out of state by pulling customers from Mississippi and Louisiana, which already have lively casino cultures, he added.
“I tell people all the time, if you like what we’ve done with Red Oak and producing Arkansas’ best restaurant — we’ve been awarded that time and time again — you’re absolutely going to love what we’re going to do with the hotel.”
Excelling in the hospitality industry is one way that Saracen can set itself apart from the competition, he added.
“Every casino can purchase the same slot machines,” Saffa said. “Every casino, blackjack is 21, but you make a statement about who you are with things like food and beverage, and we will soon be making a statement about who we are with the 400,000-square-foot expansion of a really first-class event center.”
At $550 million, the total investment of the Quapaw Nation into Saracen is no small beans; it is the largest one-time investment in tourism and hospitality the state has ever received, Saffa said.
Saracen’s economic impact is significant. The casino resort benefits the local and state economy by paying property, advertising and promotion, and sales taxes, he said, adding that to date, Saracen has paid nearly $80 million in gaming taxes.
“Those taxes go to three primary areas: the city of Pine Bluff, Jefferson County and the state of Arkansas,” he said, “so whether you gamble or not, Saracen is benefiting this community but, frankly, your community anywhere in Arkansas.”
He added that job creation is the No. 1 way in which Saracen benefits the economy. Saracen currently employs about 800 people, 70 percent of whom live in Jefferson County, and is set to employ 200 more with the addition, he said. He added that Saracen offers robust benefits packages with perks such as tuition reimbursement, 401(k) matches and life insurance plans, and no employee makes less than $15 an hour.
“Our goal has always been to employ Jefferson County and entertain central Arkansas, and I think we’re doing just that,” he said. “With that many of our team being local, it makes a difference. We aim to be the employer of choice for this region.”
Furthermore, Saracen currently draws 150,000 visitors to Pine Bluff each month, Saffa said, adding that he expects that number to grow when the hotel and event center open.
Amendment 100 to allow casino gaming in Arkansas passed with a healthy margin in Jefferson County, he said, and while there was some initial “fear of the unknown,” he said those fears dissipated as people became familiar with the casino, as people from the community began working there and as people realized they can get a pretty good bite to eat there, as well.
“This building has been a source of pride for the Pine Bluff community,” he said. “To see a half-billion dollar investment in Pine Bluff, I think, has been a bit of a shot in the arm, a good shot in the arm, to the community to see this sort of capital. … Any community in America would like to see an investment of this size, but Pine Bluff especially, it’s been a very meaningful piece.”
To learn more about Saracen Casino Resort, click here.
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