After putting off expansion late last year on claims of an ailing economy, Capay Valley’s Cache Creek Casino Resort announced a new plan two weeks ago.
The initiative will add more space and facilities to its long-running gambling and entertainment establishment.
“This is a very different project than the one we had previously proposed,” said Brent Andrew, spokesman for the Yocha Dehe tribe, which owns the casino-resort. “The project we had proposed before added 750 rooms to our hotel.”
The hotel at Cache Creek currently has 200 rooms.
This newly modified project, known as the Event Center Project, expands the tribe’s casino-resort to include a 52,000-square-foot event center and a larger gaming area, among a host of other improvements that tip the balance more toward “casino” than “resort.”
“Entertainment is our main line of business and … proposing something which enhances that makes so much more sense to us,” Andrew said.
Economic uncertainties caused the tribe to reconsider the scope of the latest expansion, originally scheduled to begin in 2009.
Not having noticed a distinct decrease in foot-traffic since the global economic decline, Cache Creek communications manager Cean Burgeson felt confident the worst was over.
“I can’t quote numbers, but it does seem to appear that we’re coming out of this,” Burgeson said.
Construction under the revised proposal is set to begin in 2011 and complete midway through 2013. Burgeson believes the new event center’s increased capacity will generate greater ticket sales.
Replacing the now 700-seat event center with a larger one will also allow for a different brand of entertainment and commercial events ranging from conventions and conferences to boxing matches and martial arts performances.
This is not the first time Cache Creek has undergone expansion. Built in 1985, the business consisted of only a bingo hall owned and operated by the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. Eight successful years later the bingo house evolved into the Cache Creek Indian Bingo & Casino. In 2004, it consummated its long streak of growth to become the Cache Creek Casino Resort that exists today.
“The new venue will allow us to bring in some bigger acts … [that] make a lot more money,” he said.
Those acts are already coming in under the current event center. Feb. 14 brings former Baywatch star David Hasselhoff to the stage in his debut musical performance in the United States.
“We’re trying to build on that full-scale resort idea,” Burgeson said.
With big-name shows like that of Hasselhoff, a golf course and nine dining establishments that complement its casino, event center and hotel, Cache Creek Casino Resort is on its way to achieving that goal, Burgeson said.
YARA ELMJOUIE can be reached at city@theaggie.org.
