Casino expansion to open June 19
Construction of the 500,000-square-foot, $240 million expansion to Potawatomi Bingo Casino in Milwaukee’s Menomonee River Valley is nearly complete. The first phase of the expansion at 1721 W. Canal St. will open to the public on Thursday, June 19. Other portions of the expansion will open through the fall. When the two-year expansion construction project is complete, the casino will have a total of 784,000 square feet of space.
The expansion will include two new restaurants. Wild Earth, a casual American restaurant, will open in July. Ruyi, an Asian fusion restaurant, will open on June 19. The expansion will also include a food court. Two of the casino’s existing restaurants, The Buffet and Dream Dance, will be moved to new locations on the first floor. Dream Dance is the casino’s fine dining restaurant. Its new location will be slightly larger and will have its own separate entrance, its own bathrooms and two rooms for private parties. Currently, Dream Dance diners must walk through the casino to get to the restaurant, and they must use the casino’s bathrooms. The new Dream Dance will open on Tuesday, June 24.
The Buffet will have a larger space on the first floor with more food offerings in its new location. The Fire Pit sports bar and grill will remain in its current location. A new bar, called Bar 360, will be placed in the middle of the new gaming floor in the casino addition.
The expansion will add about 1,500 more slot machines, for a total of 3,100 in the casino. It will also add 60 more table games, for a total of 117 in the casino. The expanded casino will also add a new gambling feature: off track betting on horse and dog races.
The expansion project also included an additional parking structure, adding 1,700 more parking stalls, and a bridge connecting a parking structure to the 16th Street Viaduct. The bridge and new parking structure were completed last year.
The building addition also includes a 57,000-square-foot shell area for future expansion. The area will be unused for now.
The casino is also adding 1,000 more employees to work in the larger casino, bringing the casino’s total employment to about 3,000. The expansion project itself, when complete, will have generated about 500 construction jobs with more than 1.2 million man hours of construction work. The general contractor for the project is Gilbane Building Company.
