Blue Chip Tower "tops out," city leaders anticipating new crowds
It will change the skyline in Michigan City, and city leaders say it may also change the way business is done in the town.
On Monday, the Blue Chip casino celebrated "topping out" their latest building project, as they completed the exterior of the building.
The new 22-story hotel tower came with a $130 million dollar price tag.
Work is set to be done this December, but the casino's owners and city leaders took part in the topping out ceremony Wednesday, and talked about their high hopes for the future.
“As you can see from the exterior of this building, it’s quite a spectacular building, quite a landmark for the city of Michigan City,” said Keith Smith, C.E.O. of Boyd Gaming, which operates the Blue Chip.
City leaders are happy to see Blue Chip is not only here to stay, but here to grow.
“This facility is now $500 million, a half a billion dollars of investment in the last 4 years. That’s a great statement on Boyd's part as far as their belief on the state of Michigan City,” said Michigan City Mayor Chuck Oberlie.
While they celebrated topping out there's still a lot of work left, as they do their best to create rooms with spectacular views.
They say the expansion was planned even before their newest competition, Four Winds casino, came into the picture.
They think the tower should bring that competition to new heights.
“The addition of the hotel will allow us to clearly have the most rooms in the market, allow us to reach out to further populations and further destinations and attract more visitors here to Michigan city, and allow us to have a more competitive product overall,” Smith said.
It could mean even more for Michigan City.
“From an economic development standpoint, we're very near a whole new era for Michigan City,” Oberlie said.
The bottom floors will be convention space--the largest in LaPorte County, with hopes to draw in large groups every day of the week, instead of the usual weekend rush.
“It will totally change the concepts of our downtown in terms of bringing visitors in for overnight purposes, shows, cross marketing in terms of our many other attractions in the community,” Oberlie said, considering the possibilities.
And while everyone is thinking big, it will still be some time before they can measure the payoff.
The new hotel will have 242 rooms and 60 suites. They say the largest suite is almost 1600 square feet.
There will also be a new spa, and some new restaurants as part of the project.
The building is curved, and the construction supervisors call the building an "elliptical" design.
That comes with an interesting feature: inside the hotel you can't see all the way down the hall because it's curved, so they say that adds in a little extra privacy.
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