Norfolk HeadWaters casino could break ground in spring 2024

With the clock ticking on HeadWaters Resort & Casino’s statutory requirement to open a permanent resort casino by November 2025 — five years after Norfolk voters approved it —  the developer has submitted new plans to the City of Norfolk, aiming to start construction in spring 2024.

The Norfolk Architecture Review Board is set to review the Pamunkey Indian Tribe’s revised casino plans at its Jan. 8, 2024, meeting. Following that meeting, the plans must still be reviewed by the city’s planning commission and ultimately approved by Norfolk City Council before any work can begin. The casino’s development team last submitted plans over the summer.

Instead of building the $500 million casino and resort in two phases with a gap between each phase, plans call for the development to be constructed continuously with the casino opening while the hotel, spa and other parts are still under construction. The casino and resort would also no longer be on the waterfront of the Elizabeth River and would have a smaller footprint.

To meet the city’s November 2025 deadline for the casino’s opening, construction would need to start by spring of next year, said Jay Smith, spokesman for HeadWaters Resort & Casino, which is being developed in a partnership between the King William-based Pamunkey Indian Tribe and Tennessee billionaire Jon Yarbrough.

Construction would start on the north side of the property and progress south. 

“Our continuous construction is in response to the city wanting to see what the entire project [looks like] and getting the whole thing built as quickly as possible,” Smith told Virginia Business.

Once the developer receives approvals for the plan and a development certificate, it can purchase the land from the city and get shovels in the ground. It also must secure a license from the Virginia Lottery Board for the casino to be operational. 

Three casinos approved by Virginia voters in November 2020 have already opened in Danville, Bristol and Portsmouth. Richmond voters in November again rejected opening a casino in the state’s capital.

Plans call for the nearly 1 million-square-foot Norfolk resort and casino to have 800 to 1,000 slot machines and 20 to 25 table games when it opens, Smith said, but those numbers would double to 1,800 to 2,000 slot machines and 50 table games by the time the development is fully completed. 

Construction plans and a detailed construction timeline have not been submitted to the city, but Smith says it’s because there are so many moving parts to the development. “This is a fluid project with many moving parts and … it’s impossible to give the completion date of the entire project,” he said. “But rest assured, we are working as fast as we can to get the entire project open.”

And because those plans have not been filed, Norfolk Mayor Kenneth Cooper Alexander said he remains skeptical about the development. He said he does not want to see a delay between the casino opening and everything else promised, including the hotel. A delay in construction would be unacceptable, he said.

Another wrinkle: At the same time the casino and resort would be constructed, the city is making plans with the Army Corps of Engineers to build a $2.6 billion seawall project to include eight miles of floodwalls, nearly a mile of levees, 11 tide gates and 10 pumping stations along the Elizabeth River. Part of that wall would be near the existing Harbor Park stadium and the casino.

Because of the seawall, the casino and resort would be on a smaller footprint, which necessitated a change in the design and size of the casino property. Instead of buying 13 or 14 acres to build the casino and resort, the developer could — with city council approval — purchase fewer acres for the development and it would not be on the waterfront, according to the plans submitted to the city. The seawall may end up on city property but the developer is still working out details about the seawall with the city.

Of the 963,000 or so square feet of the planned casino and resort, about half is a parking deck with about 1,200 spaces. Another 45,000 square feet will be the main casino floor (eventually expanded to 65,000 square feet) and restaurants, including a 180-seat sports bar restaurant with 25 seats along a bar, a grab-and-go quick service restaurant, a food hall with three or four restaurant concepts and a steak and seafood restaurant. This would all be elevated — with some of the parking garage underneath, raising parts such as the casino floor — to accommodate views over the planned seawall. 

The 300-room hotel would have a rooftop pool facing the ballpark where the Triple-A Norfolk Tides baseball team plays and a 10,000 square-foot ballroom with 8,000 square feet of meeting space.  

The Pamunkey Tribe is working with construction firms Newport News-based W.M. Jordan and Boston-based Suffolk Construction, Richmond-based architectural design firm Baskervill and Dallas-based HKS on engineering and architecture.

The project could create 2,000 construction jobs and 2,480 full-time jobs when it’s fully open.

The HeadWaters project has gone through multiple iterations since voters approved the project in a November 2020 referendum. At that time, developers pitched a $500-plus million resort casino with a 300-room hotel, restaurants, an entertainment venue, a rooftop pool, thousands of slot machines and as many as 150 table games.

Later, HeadWaters’s developers twice announced plans for a temporary casino, first inside the ballpark, and later as a single-story temporary casino in the Harbor Park parking lot.