Will new casino be a jackpot for Norfolk?

On a wintry Wednesday, a handful of bettors gathered in line awaiting the 10 a.m. opening of the Interim Gaming Hall, Norfolk‘s large temporary tented casino containing 132 slot machines.

Nearby, behind a construction fence, cranes broke the morning silence with the occasional bam, bam, bam — driving in 6,500 piles for the foundation of the permanent $750 million resort casino and hotel scheduled to open next to the Norfolk Tides ballpark in the last quarter of 2027.

To Ron Bailey, general manager of the Norfolk casino and a Boyd Gaming vice president, that hammering is the sweetest melody. “That banging sound to get these concrete piles in,” he says, “it’s like music to my ears every single day.”

Bailey, a 25-year veteran of the gaming industry, says by late winter the first bones of that casino will emerge from the site as the building begins rising. While the construction crew had to use longer piles than expected because of the building’s proximity to the Elizabeth River, the project remains on budget and on schedule, he adds.

Norfolk’s path to a casino has been long and meandering, but the city joined Bristol, Danville and Portsmouth as casino hosts in November 2025, with the opening of the Interim.

The saga started in 2018, after Virginia’s Pamunkey Indian Tribe gained federal recognition and announced plans to build a tribal casino in Norfolk, as commercial casinos were not yet legal in the commonwealth. However, in 2019, the General Assembly passed legislation allowing five cities to hold referendums for commercial casino development, including Norfolk, where voters overwhelmingly supported a casino in November 2020.

At the time, the tribe partnered with Tennessee investor Jon Yarbrough, promising a resort with a soaring 10-story glass tower hotel with 500 rooms, along with a marina, 750-seat entertainment venue and high-end restaurants. The proposal also included 3,500 to 4,500 slot machines and 100 to 225 table games.

But while casinos quickly got underway in Portsmouth, Bristol and Danville, Norfolk’s project stalled, as city councilors and developers couldn’t come to terms on design plans. After four years of inaction and a looming building deadline that would have rendered the 2020 referendum vote void, in 2024 the tribe parted ways with Yarbrough and joined forces with Boyd Gaming, a Nevada-based company with 28 mid-sized casinos and $3.75 billion in annual revenue.

In October 2024, they broke ground on the $750 million permanent casino while making preparations for the temporary tented facility. In late 2027, the casino is expected to open, including a hotel with 200 rooms, eight food and beverage outlets, a spa and a casino with1,500 slot machines and 50 table games. It is expected to employ 850 people. In December 2025, the Virginia Lottery reported $1.42 million in adjusted gaming revenue at the Interim Gaming Hall during its first 23 days in business.

Setting the table

However, local officials are preparing for less income than they expected when Norfolk residents voted on the referendum. Last fall, Norfolk City Council member Tommy Smigiel revealed that annual tax revenue projections were now set at $15 million, down from $30 million-plus projected in 2020.

Smigiel got those figures from a city presentation by Boyd Gaming that analyzed the competition facing casinos today. He notes it’s not the only revenue the city will realize from the project, including tourism dollars, and says he thinks the Norfolk casino will attract some patrons away from Rivers Casino Portsmouth, which opened in 2023 as the state’s first permanent casino.

Under Virginia law, 6% of a casino operator’s adjusted gross revenue goes to its host city until the operator passes $200 million for the year. Then the rate rises to 7%. In 2024, Rivers Casino took in more than $309 million, generating about $20 million for the city. Interim casinos can pull in plenty of revenue, but not like a permanent casino. In 2023, Danville’s Caesars Virginia temporary venue reported nearly $12 million in its first two weeks.

A Norfolk spokesperson referred questions about the project to Boyd and the tribe, declining to set up interviews with Sean Washington, the city’s economic development director, or Pat Roberts, the city manager.

Bailey says Boyd has not discussed any changes to projected revenue with the city, adding that the company is “very comfortable” with the project’s bottom line.

“We look at the overall economic impact, and it’s still, over a 10-year period of time, a $2.9 billion economic impact,” he says, noting that in addition to the gaming taxes there will be food and beverage and entertainment taxes. “I think the overall impact will be pretty powerful for the Norfolk and the Hampton Roads region.”

But the gambling landscape has become increasingly competitive and crowded, a trend projected years ago by economics professor Bob McNab, director of the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy at Old Dominion University.

Casinos face long-term challenges, McNab notes. Sports betting has become widespread and easy to access online, as have Virginia Lottery games. In addition to the three permanent casinos in Bristol, Danville and Portsmouth, Petersburg is set to open its Live! Casino & Hotel, a $1.4 billion project, in 2027, and a temporary venue was scheduled to launch at the end of January.

Portsmouth’s casino owners, meanwhile, are building a $65 million hotel that is scheduled to open in spring 2027.

While revenue at the Bristol and Danville casinos continues to rise, Rivers’ revenue increases have slowed dramatically to single digits, not unusual for a new casino.

“Five years ago, we were arguing that the landscape would become increasingly competitive and crowded with alternatives, and that two casinos fairly adjacent to each other would limit the potential of each casino,” McNab says. “If you looked at the increasing alternatives for online betting and the other choices consumers had with money from their pocketbooks, it would be difficult for one casino to thrive in the Hampton Roads area, let alone two.”

There are also short-term hurdles. With federal cutbacks, he notes, unemployment has increased, particularly in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia. Housing costs, health insurance and grocery prices have risen as well, and that impacts leisure spending.

“Casinos are, by definition, a luxury entertainment good that people use disposable income for entertainment purposes,” McNab says. “When economic conditions sour, which they are doing, casinos and other forms of entertainment are clawed back by consumers.”

While Norfolk could have an advantage as the new kid on the block, the opposite argument could be made in Portsmouth’s favor, McNab says. “They’ve had a number of years to establish themselves in the region and to build a loyal customer base.”

Tourism draw?

The other big question is whether casinos will boost overall tourist spending. Both cities’ elected reps have spoken about entertainment districts around their casinos, and Norfolk already has Harbor Park, the Tides’ baseball stadium.

But McNab says that the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission study in 2019 projected that only about 10% of all casino visitors to Norfolk and Portsmouth would come from out of town.

“If you are drawing primarily upon the local region, the casino moves from the novelty to the known entity, and then you’re essentially attracting the same people over and over again and infrequent visitors who go for anniversaries and other special occasions,” he says. “If you’re drawing more people from out of state, you’re not recycling the same number of people all the time, you’re getting new visitors, and so that that may be a little bit more sustainable for growth.”

But Bailey is confident the casino will attract visitors both from the region and from outside the state. “Boyd Gaming is celebrating 50 years,” he says. “We have a very extensive marketing program.”
The company has a rewards program for customers, Bailey notes, while Norfolk has a deep bench of history and waterfront attractions.

“We believe there’s still significant demand in this area,” he says. “Our reach is going to be very, very strong. We already have relationships with cruise lines. People [will be] coming from our other sister properties to visit Norfolk … because of the assets that are in this region. And when we open the full resort, I think the folks in this area will be pleasantly surprised and appreciative of the amount of not just money or players from the region, but outside of the region.”

Already, Bailey says, regulars at the Interim Gaming Hall know him and other staffers by name. To keep the experience comfortable, capacity is capped at about 180 people.

Casinos sometimes get focused on herding in as many people as possible, Bailey acknowledges, but Boyd is concentrating more on customer experience and service.

“It allows our players and our team members to get to know each other,” he says. “For us, it’s about the personal relationships and valuing our customers, but also creating an experience where we can replicate that experience, and people want to come back and see that, and they tell their friends about the great food, the great hotel, the great gaming experiences that they had.”

Also, it’s not just about gambling, Bailey notes. Visitors will be interested in the spa, steakhouse or other amenities, he says. “They aren’t gamblers, but that doesn’t make that dollar any less valuable.”

McNab says that the Norfolk casino can benefit from cruise traffic nearby if the waterfront district is well-integrated and easy for passengers to find. “They can be engines of economic development if they are clustered in an entertainment complex, and that, of course, is the hope — that the casino spurs growth in the Waterside area.”

Norfolk at a glance

• U.S. Department of Defense
• Sentara Health
• Norfolk Public Schools
• Norfolk city government
• Old Dominion University

• Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, 45,570 square feet of event space,  466 rooms
• Norfolk Waterside Marriott, 68,879 square feet of event space, 407 rooms
• Hilton Norfolk The Main, 60,000 square feet of event space,  300 rooms

• Norfolk Tides Minor League Baseball  (Baltimore Orioles affiliate)
• Norfolk Admirals East Coast Hockey League