Murphy – Only seven years after it opened, Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel has broken ground on a $275 million expansion.
The project is expected to reach completion in 2024 and includes planned additions such as 25,000 square feet of expanded gaming floor, a 296-room hotel tower, a 12,000 square-foot rooftop restaurant and more.
Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River completed its first expansion in 2017 with the Multi-tainment Center. General Manager Lumpy Lambert said this latest project will further enhance guests’ experience and boost the local economy.
“As an operator, you’re trying to think about the guest experience,” Lambert said. “When we built this project in 2015, it was only $110 million. ... We didn’t have some of the amenities that this project will introduce.”
Harrah’s expansion will also create more than 2,500 construction jobs and add more than 100 operational positions upon opening. The company has about 1,000 employees today at the local casino and hotel.
“We anticipate being somewhere in the neighborhood of (adding) 125 to 150, maybe 175,” Lambert said. “We say 100 because some of those positions, we’ll have some part-time positions. With a 10-table poker room, that’s 50-60 employees just learning the poker room side.”
Harrah’s expansion will provide 400 new slot machines – a 50 percent increase over the current offerings – along with 12 additional gaming tables and a 10-table World Series of Poker poker room. The new hotel tower will feature an indoor pool and fitness center, and its 296 rooms will double the current capacity. A 9,600 square-foot full-service spa and salon is also included.
Lambert said Harrah’s Cherokee Valley River has been especially beneficial to guests coming from Chattanooga, Tenn. However, Harrah’s is also seeing a growing customer base from even farther away.
“Atlanta is still our biggest feeder market, followed closely by Chattanooga,” Lambert said. “Whenever we were at Cherokee, before this project, Chattanooga was always a challenging market to get because literally that customer had to go through two gorges – three hours and two gorges.
“Now it’s 90 minutes and a nice little ride, so we’ve had great success from the Chattanooga market. ... We’re fortunate to be where we are in the Southeast because some of those outer markets, we’re seeing some higher visitations from as far out as Nashville, a three- or four-hour radius.”