The Garden City Telegram

 Email this story | Add Your Comment  | Read (1) Comments

Dodge casino opens doors

Published 12/16/2009 in Local News

By KEN STEPHENS

Special to The Telegram

DODGE CITY -- Ten years ago, local banker Jeff Thorpe and a few other members of the board of the Boot Hill Museum were sitting around in the Long Horn Saloon talking about how they'd like to have a little legalized gambling in the saloon, much like the cowboys enjoyed when they came in off the trail in the 1870s.

"We had real low horizons," he said.

But out of that meeting came Boot Hill Gaming Inc., an organization that lobbied the Kansas Legislature for eight years until at 1:32 early one morning in March 2007, Thorpe got a call telling him the Legislature had passed the Kansas Expanded Lottery Act.

"I stared at the ceiling the rest of the night thinking, 'What have we done?' " he said.

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, Thorpe, the president of Boot Hill Gaming, got his answer when the doors opened to several hundred gamblers eager to try their luck at the Boot Hill Casino and Resort, the first state-owned casino in the United States and Kansas' first non-tribal casino.

Some, like Connie and Alvin Martin of Guymon, Okla., were so eager to get started they didn't spend much time looking around at the octagonal gaming room before settling in at two of the casino's 584 slot machines. They had been waiting for it to open since hearing about it two months ago, said Alvin, a retired truck driver.

"This is my Christmas present," said Connie, a caregiver for the elderly.

She said that she and Alvin go to casinos once or twice a month, usually in Clinton, Okla.

"Because this is just an hour and a half away, we'll be here pretty often, I think," she said.

Vernon Nau of Dodge City said he used to go to casinos in Colorado.

"It's awesome," he said of the Boot Hill Casino. "It's as nice as any casinos I've seen in Cripple Creek or Central City. It's very plush."

While he was talking, Sherry Stover of Dodge City, seated at the $1 slot next to Nau, hit a $900 jackpot.

"We couldn't wait for it to open," she said. "We like to go to casinos, so it's exciting to have one here. It's really nice."

And as for how loose her slot machine was? "I love it."

Stephen Martino, executive director of the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission, signed the papers authorizing the casino to open for business at 11:30 a.m. Monday, about 90 minutes before the doors actually opened. The casino had gone through two "controlled demonstrations" to test its readiness.

After the first, on Dec. 9, the KRGC told the casino management of a couple of problems with its central computer system, which were corrected over the weekend in time for the second demonstration on Monday afternoon, Martino said. The casino's central computer system allows enforcement agents from the KRGC to monitor slot machine performance and shut all of them down if they spot irregularities.

The KRGC also told the casino it needed to continue to work on training employees. Martino said that during the first demonstration, "one table game was pretty ragged." However, he said he thought that was a case of inexperience and nervousness on the part of dealers and that they were much improved in Monday's demonstration.

The casino planned to stay open until 11 p.m. Tuesday night, an earlier closing than the 5 a.m. Wednesday previously announced. The casino will close for a few hours to prepare for a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony with Gov. Mark Parkinson at 11 a.m. today. After that, the casino will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Thorpe said the $90 million casino is the largest single addition to Ford County's assessed valuation ever. It will be the county's biggest taxpayer and fourth-largest employer. The casino, operated by the Butler National Co., hopes to draw gamblers from as far as Wichita and Amarillo and to gross about $44 million a year, general manager Mike Tamburelli said. The state will get 22 percent of the gross, Dodge City and Ford County 1.5 percent each, and 2 percent will go to the Problem Gambling and Addictions Fund.

The casino opened with 255 employees making an average of $11 an hour, and Tamburelli said the casino is still looking to hire about 20 more employees.

Welcome!    

Today's events •  Weekly Events

Submit An Event

Telegram Featured Video