Though the sun was shining Friday morning, officials from the Pechanga Resort & Casino had to move a press conference about today’s grand opening of the resort’s $300 million expansion indoors.
Recent rains had left the grounds of the Temecula casino’s new 4½ acre pool complex over-saturated, preventing the installation of fresh sod.
Over-saturated could also describe the fiercely competitive and dizzyingly dynamic San Diego-area casino industry, where the region’s 10 Indian gaming properties are locked in a $1 billion expansion battle for customers. This one-upping of pricey luxury amenities — from plush hotels and spas to swanky pools — appears to be putting a financial squeeze on several casinos.
On Tuesday, the developers and operators of Hollywood Casino in Jamul, Penn National Gaming, declared in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it was pulling out of a management contract with the Jamul Indian Village tribe, citing a loss of $77.9 million on a $94 million loan.
Control of San Diego’s newest casino, which cost $460 million and opened in October of 2016 despite years of local opposition, will revert fully to the Jamul tribe on May 28 and be rebranded as Jamul Casino.
Also on Tuesday, Pala Casino Spa & Resort confirmed an unspecified number of layoffs, citing facility closures prompted by a $170 million expansion and remodeling as well as economic pressures from “an increasingly competitive Southern California casino resort market.”
Including Pechanga and Pala, a total of six local casinos have been undergoing expansions, with Barona Resort & Casino, Sycuan Casino, Valley View Casino & Hotel and Viejas Casino & Resort adding hotels, restaurants, spas, casino space and hundreds of thousands of square footage to their properties.
Longtime Las Vegas-based Indian gaming expert Dave Palermo said he’s not surprised that San Diego’s current casino building-boom bubble could be bursting for some.
“It’s extremely crowded there,” Palermo said. “It’s extremely competitive.”
“Those expansion projects are more indicative of the increasing competition among the casinos themselves rather than the economy. They’re trying to keep pace with the rest of the operators rather than expand their market share.”
Over the past decade, he said, the number of casinos in the state has remained flat — at around 60 — and annual tribal gaming revenue growth has held steady at about 5 percent.
“Gambling in California, many people get the impression that it has been an increasingly growing market, and it has,” Palermo said, “but the numbers speak for themselves — not a lot of new properties are opening.”
According to the National Indian Gaming Commission’s most recent data, tribal casinos generated $8.4 billion in revenue in California and Northern Nevada (which doesn’t include Las Vegas) in 2016, a 6.3 percent increase over the previous year. The national total in 2016 was $31.2 billion.
While most new casinos need about a year to “really start clicking,” Palermo said, “Jamul was a very problematic project in a lot of ways and got off to a pretty rocky start.”
Intense community opposition and lawsuits against the casino were coupled with a limited, 4-acre footprint that prevented the building of a hotel or other amenities — even that most signature of casino offerings, a buffet.
“It’s a bad bet, it always has been and it always will be,” said County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who has been one of the most vociferous challengers of the Jamul casino, which, like Barona, Sycuan, Viejas and Golden Acorn, is located in her district.
“That $460 million was a loss,” said Jacob, who on Friday continued to cite increased traffic on State Route 94 as a main source of her opposition. “Penn National has a lot of expertise in operating casinos, and Jamul was a bad bet for them. How in the world do the Jamul Indian Village folks think that they can do any better than Penn National in turning around this casino and making money off it? They’re dreaming.”
The Wyomissing, Penn.-based regional gaming powerhouse operates nearly 30 casinos around the country, including the Tropicana in Las Vegas.
In a statement released by the Jamul tribe late Thursday, chairwoman Erica Pinto called the severed ties with Penn National “a natural next step toward economic self-sufficiency.”
“Our announcement today represents an important step toward our long-held goal to manage our own casino,” Pinto said.
Tribal representatives and Penn National officials both declined to answer specific questions about revenue losses and the fractured deal, with a spokeswoman referring to comments in the the press release.
In the statement, Pinto said layoffs were not not anticipated as a result of the “management transition.”
About 1,000 full- and part-time jobs were generated by the Jamul casino. Regionally, nearly 3,000 positions were expected to be created by the $1 billion expansion development projects, not including construction jobs.
Casino layoffs have been rare in the post-Great Recession era, though the sovereign status of the tribes exempts them from many government reporting requirements.
Officials at Pala declined several interview requests and wouldn’t detail the number of layoffs at the North County resort. A spokesman said the casino still intended to hire 200 people as a result of its expansion, which will add a 349-room hotel tower by May 2019.
“Pala Casino Spa & Resort is in the midst of a major remodeling effort,” the casino said in a statement. “Given the reduction of space while this work is being completed, coupled with an increasingly competitive Southern California casino resort market, we are adjusting our staffing so that it meets the needs of our current resort and loyal patrons. As our new amenities open to the public, we expect to add to our workforce as business dictates.”
Pala competes directly with Pechanga — which now has the biggest casino hotel in California — Valley View and Harrah’s Resort Southern California for customers from San Diego, Riverside County, Orange County and beyond.
Alan Meister, an Irvine-based economist and author of the annual Indian Gaming Industry Report, said casinos’ emphasis on adding non-gambling amenities is key to elbowing their way through a crowded field.
“While I think the market is not saturated, there is very strong competition given the number of tribal casinos operating in the region,” Meister said. “I think there is still room for growth, but it’s about trying to expand the market and grow the market. … These new amenities give them access to new segments in the customer market. They can draw from further distances, get them to stay longer and spend more.”
While praising the the non-gaming aspects of the development projects at Barona, Sycuan and Viejas, Jacob is not advocating that the Jamul tribune add amenities to its casino.
“My hope is they stop operating the casino and work with the community to see what other kind of economic venture they could have,” Jacob said.
“The structure’s there so maybe there’s something else that would be agreeable like affordable housing, memory care facilities, or senior housing. There are other ways to make money.”
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