It just was not a good property.īURNETT: General Manager, Jon Lucas, was brought in two months before Katrina to remodel the dowdy gaming complex. JON LUCAS (General Manager, IP Hotel and Casino): It was not a clean property. And in an industry where razzle-dazzle is everything, it was time for an extreme makeover. The ungainly casino barges had arrived in 1992. Most of them have reached what industry insiders call market maturity. With that decision, the gaming industry hit the jackpot.īURNETT: Today 11 out of 12 casinos have rebuilt along the coast, many of them bigger than ever.

So the legislature passed a special law allowing the casinos to move from their floating barges to permanent land-based operations at the water's edge. We really need that.īURNETT: Remember of Biloxi after the storm with the casino barge sitting beside Highway 90? Mississippi was afraid Katrina would chase away the industry which is the state's largest taxpayer and employer.

SIMMONS: We call these the big engines - the casinos - and I was very much a part of having get them reestablished and making - working with the governor and the legislature that it was about pumping money into the economy. You're not spending your house note and your car note.īURNETT: In addition to frequenting the blackjack table, Robert Simmons is a lobbyist for the casinos. GLENDA SIMMONS (IP Casino patron): We have fun. All right, good.īURNETT: He comes here several nights a week to the IP Casino on Biloxi's Back Bay with his wife Glenda(ph). Oh, man.īURNETT: Robert Simmons(ph) stands 6 foot 5 and wears a necklace with the word love spelled out in gold. ROBERT SIMMONS (IP Casino Patron): Blackjack. But today, the giant Las Vegas-style casinos looming over the beach have not only recovered, they're booming. Thirty-six years later, Katrina pulverizes Biloxi. JOHN BURNETT: In 1969, Hurricane Camille roars through Biloxi destroying the illegal slot machines, craps tables and roulette wheels that thrive in the beachfront clubs along U.S. Well, now it seems Katrina may have been the best thing that ever happened to gambling in the seaside city of Biloxi. After the storm in 2005, there were suggestions the casinos might not return. They raked in nearly three billion dollars, which is remarkable after the pounding the Gulf Coast took from Hurricane Katrina. 2007 was a record year for Mississippi casinos.

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