Betty Matis
June 20, 2007Rita Plaisance
June 22, 2007
General Manager Neil Narter is smiling, calling Amelia Belle Casino’s first month of operation a “smashing success.”
St. Mary Parish Councilman Chuck Walters is smiling, too. He and fellow councilmen are planning a budget to spend $1.5 million, the first of nine annual payments the casino owners are slated to make to St. Mary’s government as part of an agreement to allow the boat to open in the parish.
Narter, who previously worked as general manager at Evangeline Downs’ Casino in Opelousas, the Copa Casino in Gulfport and Boomtown Casino in Biloxi,
said the Amelia Belle is definitely “the locals’ casino,” with the majority of its customers coming from Amelia, Morgan City, Thibodaux and Houma.
Narter said Fridays and Saturdays are his two busiest days, with large, late-night crowds playing in two shifts, until roughly 2 a.m. each morning.
“A rule of thumb in the casino business is that you try to get customers to make up 40 percent of your slot play, using their player cards, ” Narter said. “I can tell you already, that we’re over that 40 percent figure here at the Amelia Belle. In fact, our percentage is more than what I ever saw during my days of working on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“We’re doing well here … really well. Our slot play is way higher than what you’d normally find at a casino of this size,” he said.
The casino is Louisiana’s largest floating facility, the equivalent of a six-story building.
The first floor features table games and slots. The second features slots and a poker room.
And the third floor features a 150 seat buffet, and an open-area for entertainment purposes.
With the casino’s opening also came business for St. Mary Parish Government.
Parish Chief Administrative Officer Henry “Bo” LaGrange said Amelia Belle Casino owners paid the parish its first of ten $1.5 million payments, as part of their agreement to locate on Bayou Boeuf, adjacent to Lake Palourde Road, in Amelia.
Columbia Sussex, now doing business as Tropicana Casinos and Resorts, www.tropicanacasinos.com, agreed to that stipulation, after St. Mary Parish voters approved the company relocating the boat to the area in a special parishwide election in 2006. The company previously operated the Amelia Belle for only two months, as the Belle of Orleans, before it sustained heavy damages from hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Prior to the company’s purchase of the casino, it was formerly known as Bally’s.
Walters said he and his colleagues are assembling an ambitious list of projects with the casino’s first payment. The projects include:
€ $450,000 to the St. Mary Parish Sheriff’s Office to provide additional law enforcement;
€ $50,000 to the District Attorney’s Office for increases in operation;
€ $370,000 toward parish debt service;
€ $100,000 to purchase two fire trucks;
€ $5,000 to all 11 fire departments within the parish, for a total of $55,000, for operations and maintenance;
€ $50,000 to the St. Mary Parish Center of Hope;
€ $50,000 to the St. Mary Community Action Agency for a two-year capital outlay match grant;
€ $50,000 to create plans to revitalize Amelia;
€ $100,000 to the parish general fund for small projects and agency allocations;
€ $100,000 for an emergency rainy day fund balance.
Walters said the parish will also allocate these amounts of capital outlay expenditures in these cities and towns:
€ $61,000 to the City of Morgan City;
€ $37,000 to the City of Franklin;
€ $34,000 to the City of Patterson;
€ $28,000 to the Town of Berwick;
€ $25,000 to the Town of Baldwin.
