Published: January 29, 2022, 11:57 pm.
Last updated on: January 29, 2022, 11:57 pm.
The Rose Gaming Resort, a nearly $400 million project in Prince William County, Virginia, southwest of the nation’s capital, is officially under construction.
The Colonial Downs Group is behind a $389 million gaming resort in Dumfries that will replace the landfill that has been in operation for 37 years. The Potomac landfill, located along I-95, accepted its last truckload yesterday, Jan. 28.
The Potomac landfill served the area as a construction waste dump. Over the years, the mound has grown into a mound about 230 feet high.
It’s bittersweet . said Phil Pete, president of the Potomac WUSA9. “People were working every day and raising their families on the income they earned by taking someone else’s trash and putting it in the land.”
Those days are over for Pete and the 15 people at the landfill. The eye dome that rises constantly above Dumfries will soon become the home of The Rose Gaming Resort.
History feeds the future
The Rose Gaming Resort scheme places a new hotel and casino complex on the landfill. The property will include 305 guest rooms, eight restaurants, conference and meeting facilities, and nearly 50,000 square feet of gaming space.
The resort is located at the base of the former landfill. The remaining land will be converted into a recreational park of approximately 79 acres.
Colonial Downs Group, which owns and operates Rosie’s Gaming Emporiums in New Kent, Vinton, Richmond, Hampton, Collinsville and Dumfries, is betting heavily on Virginia’s emerging gaming industry. Colonial Downs, an entity controlled by casino and hospitality company Peninsula Pacific Entertainment (P2E) in California, is using its historic horse racing machines to its advantage.
In 2018, P2E agreed to buy Colonial Downs indoor track for $20 million. But a condition of the acquisition was that Virginia allow P2E and the newly formed Colonial Downs group to operate Historic Horse Racing (HHR) machines at the track, as well as at satellite sites.
HHR Stations mimic traditional casino slot machines, but are in fact equivalent electronic betting networks. The outcome of each game is not as random as a slot machine but is instead dependent on the outcome of the previously run horse race and the odds that occurred on that race day.
DC . Market
The Pacific Peninsula has recently suffered two major electoral blows.
Last November, voters in Richmond, Virginia, dismissed the casino’s playground as P2E by a narrow majority. P2E has partnered with Urban One on a $565 million project called ONE Casino + Resort, but Richmond voters rejected the proposal.
Last month, voters in the Parish of St. Tammany in Louisiana rejected a proposed $325 million P2E development project called Camellia Bay Resort. P2E was seeking to move its Louisiana gaming license from Bossier to northern New Orleans in Slidell.
With Richmond and Slidell, of the three projects that P2E hopes to develop in 2022, only The Rose in Dumfries is moving forward. But with the DC metro less than 30 miles away, P2E is eager to take advantage of the rich area.
Officials in Dumfries and nearby cities hope The Rose will retain some of the estimated $350 million in annual gaming revenue from Northern Virginia that currently flows through the Potomac River to MGM National Harbor in Maryland.
Four commercial casinos with slot machines and traditional table games, as well as sports betting is under development in Virginia. But the far north casino project is currently in Norfolk. Richmond continues to discuss its next steps regarding its non-issued casino licence.