Hard Rock Bristol delays permanent casino opening

The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol’s development team has pushed back the opening of the permanent casino, previously expected in July, and will instead open its approximately $515 million permanent casino resort in late fall.

The team — a joint venture between Hard Rock, Par Ventures President Clyde Stacy and The United Co. Chairman Jim McGlothlin — said in a news release Wednesday that it expects the project’s completion in late fall.

“I think sometimes people forget [Hard Rock is] not just a casino company,” Allie Evangelista, president of the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol, said Friday. “And that’s why we’re not so focused on rushing into opening a casino floor, because we really want people to see us for who we are as an entertainment and hospitality business.”

The temporary Bristol Casino: Future Home of Hard Rock opened July 8, 2022, making it Virginia’s first operating casino. The temporary 30,000-square-foot casino in the former Bristol Mall has about 900 slots, 29 table games and a sportsbook. It also has a restaurant, Mr. Lucky’s, as well as a sports bar and lounge, and a grab-and-go food outlet.

In its first year of operation, the temporary casino made $157 million in net gaming revenues. The casino hosted visitors from across the nation during its first six months of operation, Evangelista told Virginia Business earlier this year.

The permanent resort casino is expected to have a 303-room hotel, more than 1,500 slots, 75 table games, new dining venues and a 2,000-seat indoor entertainment venue.

“As a business, for us, this is a lot more exciting because we were opening a casino floor rather than opening the full Hard Rock experience,” said Evangelista, “and being able to open everything at once … allows us to really have a great first impression.”

It also means that the resort will not be a construction site, she added, so guests won’t experience disruptive construction noise — particularly important for hotel guests’ stays — and interruptions in operations like power outages.

“There’ll be probably like a few weeks between the time that we are fully operating in the permanent [casino] that we’ll be doing some work to install some of the games that we have currently operating on the new floor and things like that, but there won’t be any downtime or any impact to the guests,” Evangelista said.

Now that the full casino resort will open all at once, rather than in phases, “we believe the construction is redoing their timeline, because you don’t have to [put up] temporary wall things, [and] you don’t have to go around operations, so we believe we can pick up some time,” said Evangelista. “We really don’t have a timeline; we’re just going with fall until they’re able to give us a more precise date on how much time they can pick up from not having to open in July.”

TN Ward and BurWil Construction form the construction team for the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Bristol.

Hard Rock is continuing with some openings that were scheduled for July, though. It will open a few of its permanent food options next month, according to Evangelista. A former pizza restaurant is under renovation and will open as Constant Grind, a Hard Rock coffee and pastry shop brand. An area upstairs, leading up to the new casino floor, has been dubbed Marketplace, and it will open with Fish & Chicken Co., Brick’d Italian Kitchen and Street Tacos.

Mr. Lucky’s will stay open until the permanent casino opens, and the existing sports bar will close then. In addition to Constant Grind and the Marketplace options, the permanent casino’s dining venues will include Hard Rock Cafe, Council Oak Steakhouse and YouYu Noodle Bar.

The extended timeline follows a 2024-2026 budget amendment directing the Virginia Lottery to renew, before June 30, temporary casino operators’ authorizations to conduct gaming for an additional six months beyond the previously codified two-year limit, provided certain conditions are met.

The conditions in the amendment are that:

• A portion of the temporary gaming facility will be incorporated as part of the permanent facility;
• the preferred casino operator has met the $300 million minimum capital investment;
• and the Virginia Lottery “determined that the preferred casino gaming operator has made a good faith effort to comply with the approved construction schedule.”

More than 600 construction workers are on site daily, according to a news release. Because Hard Rock was preparing the permanent casino for a July opening, the casino floor has slot machines, cameras, lighting and carpet installed and cages ready, Evangelista said.

The hotel is built, and the walls and window installations are complete. Almost all of its bathrooms are completed, she said. Workers are pouring the flooring for the front desk area.

The resort’s 2,000-seat entertainment venue, Hard Rock Live, is built out and enclosed, and work continues on the inside, according to Evangelista.

The Bristol Hard Rock currently has 619 employees, Evangelista said. An additional 200 people have accepted job offers and will come onboard as each acquires the necessary Virginia Lottery license.

From now until the end of the year, the team will continue hiring, with a goal of reaching about 1,400 employees for the full resort, Evangelista said.