Mississippi Gaming Commission grants approval of Diamondhead Casino

Two months after rejecting one site in Diamondhead, the Mississippi Gaming Commission on Thursday granted site approval for Diamondhead Casino, which owns 400 acres south of Interstate 10 along the Bay of St. Louis.

"Now the ball's in their court," said Allen Godfrey, commission executive director. The company already had site approval, issued in the mid-1990s, for a casino on the water. This new site approval allows a casino within 800 feet of the water under the land-based casino legislation approved in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

Location is the difference between this property and the Jacob's Entertainment site to the west of Yacht Club Drive. "It touches the waters of the Bay of St. Louis," Godfrey said of the Diamondhead Casino site. The commission rejected the Jacob's site in part because the property is not on the Bay of St. Louis but is on a man-made canal.

Diamondhead Casino has worked for years to build a casino on the property. Earlier this year, Ted Arnault, former chairman of MTR Gaming Group, took over for long-time chair Deborah Vitale. Both attended the commission meeting Thursday in Jackson. Vitale said after the meeting she and Arnault have the combined package to move development forward.

Building the resort to the commission's new guidelines, which require a 300-room hotel and other amenities, is something planned all along, Vitale said. "All of my analysis supported the 300 rooms," she said. While the casinos in Biloxi are destination resorts, "ours is also a drive-by," she said.

The property fronts the interstate, and she said that will attract people driving by who decide to come in and gamble and also those planning an overnight stop. No neighbors attended Thursday's meeting to oppose the casino. "We've insulated the site from the residents," Vitale said. "That's the key."

The next time the casino will go before the commission is when the financing is in place and the project is ready to proceed with construction.