Cripple Creek’s gaming industry will take its first steps toward becoming more like what gamblers see in Black Hawk with the opening late this year of a massive expansion of Bronco Billy’s Casino that will feature 300 upscale hotel rooms and other amenities.
Las Vegas-based Full House Resorts, owner of Bronco Billy’s, is spending $250 million to build the nine-story hotel and casino complex attached to the north and west sides of Bronco Billy’s Casino that's scheduled to open Dec. 26 in a bid to attract more well-heeled customers.
The company acquired Bronco Billy’s in 2016 and a year later unveiled plans to build a major hotel. Those plans were expanded after Colorado and Cripple Creek voters eliminated bet limits in 2021.
The project follows a similar path blazed by casinos in Black Hawk, which began expanding with the opening of a 535-room hotel tower in the Ameristar Casino in 2009, followed by a 516-room hotel complex and spa in the Monarch Casino Resort in 2020. Black Hawk and nearby Central City in the mountains outside Denver, along with Cripple Creek west of Colorado Springs, are the only Colorado cities where casinos operate legally following a voter-approved Constitutional amendment in 1990.
Black Hawk's expansion bets generally have paid off, boosting the average amount gamblers spent in the city’s casinos by about a third and generating big profits for the casinos that invested more than $600 million in the two projects.
“Cripple Creek has been part of a larger discussion about making the gaming industry a real destination (for visitors) with world-class resorts, fabulous hotels and restaurants and great entertainment,” said Peggi O’Keefe, executive director of the Colorado Gaming Association. “Black Hawk started to make some of those changes earlier and they are getting customers who want the full destination experience. I think that the potential for growth in Cripple Creek is really good.”
Full House is banking on similar results from its complex, to be called the Chamonix Casino and Hotel and named for a French resort city that hosted the Winter Olympics in 1924.
The hotel will be nearly twice the size of Cripple Creek’s largest lodging, the 158-room Double Eagle Hotel, and will double the number of hotel rooms in the city to about 600. It also will feature 15,000 square feet in a ballroom and five meeting rooms that could accommodate up to 800 people. Full House plans to begin taking room reservations by late July.
The 300 rooms in the Chamonix complex will include two presidential suites that are four times the size of a standard hotel room and 48 other suites; Full House has said rooms will be built to standards that the company expects will earn the property a four-star rating from major hotel rating groups. The complex also will have a full-service spa, rooftop pool, exercise studio, a free-standing gold jewelry store in front of the hotel, a lobby convenience shop, four restaurants and three bars.
The complex also will include a parking garage, paved employee and valet lots with more than 500 spaces and six electric-vehicle charging stations.
Full House will retain the Bronco Billy’s name on the front of the existing casino, which is being extensively remodeled. Bronco Billy’s employs about 225 people, which will grow to nearly 500 when the Chamonix complex opens, said Baxter Lee, general manager of Bronco Billy’s Casino.
A dining destination, too
Full House announced last month that Las Vegas chef Barry Dekake has agreed to operate a fine dining restaurant in the hotel and casino complex that company CEO Dan Lee (unrelated to Baxter Lee) said in a news release would compete “to be one of the state’s leading restaurants.”
Dekake operates Barry’s Prime Downtown in the Circa Las Vegas casino and previously was executive chef at the now closed N9NE Steakhouse in the Palms Resort just off the Las Vegas strip.
Construction on the Chamonix complex, now 80% complete and visible from miles away, already is bringing more customers to Cripple Creek with sidewalk and car traffic busier earlier than in past years, said Jeff Mosher, the city of Cripple Creek's special projects director. The city is marketing itself as more than just a casino town, offering what he called “an authentic experience in the mountains” with more to do and see beyond gaming.
“Cripple Creek won’t become Black Hawk — we have a school, library, post office, grocery store and a medical center,” Mosher said. “My hope is that someday visitors will come here and say I didn’t realize there was gaming because there will be so much else to do.”
Changing the market
Chad Beynon, managing director and gaming industry analyst for Macquarie Securities in New York, which is part of a global financial services group, believes Full House will have similar results in Cripple Creek to the profits Monarch and others have been able to generate in Black Hawk.
Two years ago, Benyon said the Chamonix project "has the potential to transform the property and the market" by increasing spending of Cripple Creek gaming customers, which has lagged the national average and spending in Black Hawk.
Full House is “introducing a new product that is not in the market (Cripple Creek). They are looking for a different kind of customer than currently visits Cripple Creek — this project is aspirational,” Beynon said in a recent interview. “If the product is in line with what the customer wants, they will be busy and do well. Everything looks as good or better than when they started this project (in 2021). Nothing has really changed with the company or our view of the market.”
The average gambler in Cripple Creek spends about $150 each visit, or 25% less than the nearly $200 daily spend by the average gambler in Black Hawk and well below the $300-$400 a day in most other major gaming markets, Beynon said.
Full House and owners of the Ameristar and Monarch casinos upgraded their properties to attract the type of gamblers that spend $300 to $400 in casinos in other states, but weren’t interested in Colorado casinos before bet limits were lifted.
Hotel rooms are a major factor in bringing in gamblers who spend more; casinos often offer complimentary rooms and meals to their best customers — perks that assume the gambler will spend twice as much in the casino as the cost of the room, Beynon said. Full House plans to price rooms in the Chamonix complex starting at about $200 a night, meaning it expects customers who get a complimentary room to spend at least $400 a day in the casino.
“Casinos generally want to give away at least 50% of their rooms to their best customers, and on weekdays and other slower periods virtually all the rooms are complimentary,” Beynon said. “In places like Macau (the Chinese city that's the world’s largest gaming location), all of the rooms are given away to customers who are spending $1,000 a day, but in Las Vegas about 25% of the rooms are complimentary or heavily discounted.”
While the 300 rooms in the Chamonix are “a lot for the market, there certainly is a case for more rooms if the property is successful and others will then look to expand,” Beynon said. “Usually when there is some capacity added, then you see more develop. I still think there is demand in this market.”
Other growth?
That capacity could come from Triple Crown Casinos, which had planned to build a 105-room, six-story hotel attached to its Brass Ass Casino in Cripple Creek.
The company, which also owns the Midnight Rose and McGills casinos and is the city’s largest casino operator with 690 slot machines and table games, has told Cripple Creek officials the project is on hold. Triple Crown officials did not respond to requests for comment on the status of its hotel plans.
Cripple Creek's next round of expansion could come from its newest investor.
A company owned by Texas billionaire and restaurant tycoon Tilman Fertitta bought Wildwood Casino and Hotel in November with plans to convert it to Fertitta Entertainment’s Golden Nugget brand. The Wildwood Casino is the largest single casino in Cripple Creek with 557 slot machines and table games, including the city’s only baccarat table and retail sportsbook. The deal includes an adjacent 101-room hotel opened in 2021.
Wildwood General Manager Matt Andrighetti said the new owners are spending "multimillions" of dollars to renovate the casino over the next few months to open a Saltgrass Steakhouse (owned by Fertitta Entertainment) to replace Joe’s Diner. Other projects include moving the coffee shop closer to the main entrance and replacing carpet, repainting and refinishing walls, installing 50 new slot machines and replacing signage when the casino changes to the Golden Nugget name in August.
Fertitta Entertainment “owns the Saltgrass brand and we wanted to bring a steakhouse to Cripple Creek, so the brand and opportunity came together,” Andrighetti said. Saltgrass Steakhouse has long operated a restaurant near the Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs.
Beynon, the industry analyst, said he expects Fertitta Entertainment to closely follow how well the Chamonix performs but noted the Ameristar expansion triggered demand for a second upscale hotel development in Black Hawk. While Black Hawk draws customers from the Denver market and Cripple Creek draws customers from the smaller southern Colorado market, he said rapid population and economic growth in recent years in the Colorado Springs area has boosted demand in Cripple Creek.
O’Keefe, of the Colorado Gaming Association, believes the Chamonix project will trigger additional investment by other casinos in Cripple Creek for other types of business, including restaurants, retailers, service providers and housing for employees of casinos and other businesses.
Five developers are seeking annexation of nearly 100 acres into the city that could accommodate hundreds of additional housing units, including apartments, town homes single-family homes, said Mosher, the Cripple Creek special projects director.
Cripple Creek is using a state grant to study whether to start a housing authority, land trust or land bank to promote housing development; a 2019 study conducted for the city showed it will need 600 additional housing units by 2026.