|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
St. Louis welcomes
Harrah's Players'
River Port Casino
Project
St. Louis, USA - Gambling in St. Louis has come a long way from the days
when a riverboat casino was really a boat tied-up to a pier. The River Port
Casino Center
will bring a big change in gambling to the St. Louis area. The River
Port Casino
Center has 2460 slot machines and
160 table games which expanded the St.
Louis gambling community by more than half. Its
Disney-style streets gave artificial blue sky followed the latest trends on Las Vegas Strips. It is
the first casino in the St. Louis
area with its own hotel.
The $286 million dollar project was a joint venture of Harrah's
Entertainment and Players Internationals Inc. The complex has four casinos
built on large barges free from the constraints of narrow riverboats. The
barges have the floor space and the ceiling heights to match land-based
casinos. Do not look for water or gang planks, the barge floats in a basin
adjacent to the Missouri River. Your feet
can not tell the difference when you leave the land-based pavilion and enter
the casino. The pavilion links the casino with the hotel, the parking garage,
and a main entrance, which illustrates the Disney influence on themed
entertainment.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The main passageway is called a "streetscape". For its ceiling,
the streetscape has a popular themed image. An artificial sky with lighting
that can make the blue lighter or darker. This was first done at Disneyland in the Blue Bayou Restaurant. Interspersed
amongst the streetscape storefronts are a gift shop, a Big Bear Candy
Company, a river port trader, two fine dining
restaurants with 150 seats a piece, street-side snacks, child-care center
called Planet 4 Kidz, and a 1500 seat entertainment
lounge called Stage-Left. The streetscape also has a joint ticketing center
for Harrah's and Players casinos and separate counters for each company's
frequent players program. The three-story façades represent a mythical Missouri riverboat
town of the 1850's.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"We did a lot research to make the interior streetscapes look like a
representation of the Missouri
riverboat town of the 1850's," said Dr. Richard Fernandes
AIA, President of ART. This was no accident, the ART Team of colleagues are
all veterans of Walt Disney Imagineering. Head designers
were composed of Dr. Richard J. Fernandes, Susanna
Au, Dave Jacobs, Paul Opp, Russ Menzer,
Napoleon Quibin, James Poole, and Hong Nguyen.
|
|
