Osage Casinos unveils $160 M expansion project

The lavishness of the Tulsa Osage Casino’s new $160 million casino and hotel expansion was on full display Wednesday, leaving at least one member of tribe’s leadership floored.

“This has kind of been my dream,” said Mark Simms, chairman of the Osage Nation Gaming Enterprise Board. “I’ve been on it since the beginning. I’ve looked at the plans. I saw the pictures. But everything didn’t look like this. It didn’t do it justice.”

Several hundred people turned out for the opening of the Osage Casino Hotel, a site four minutes north of downtown that will eventually employ at least 400 people and feature an entertainment venue, gaming floor, 141-room hotel, sports bar, cafe, pool and Nine Band Brewing Co., a full-service brewery.

The largest Osage Casinos footprint, the entire complex at 951 W. 36th St. North encompasses 247,000 square feet. It will bring an estimated economic impact of $32 million annually in wages and salaries, said Mike Neal, president and CEO of the Tulsa Regional Chamber.

It also puts the Osage on comparable entertainment and gaming footing with the Cherokee Nation and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Those two tribes already have mega-footprints in the area, the Cherokees with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Tulsa in Catoosa and the Creeks with Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville offerings at River Spirit Casino Resort near 81st Street and Riverside Parkway.

Revenues from the Osages’ casinos provide the tribe with funding for health care, education and cultural programs.

“The new facility here adds to gaming opportunities in the Tulsa area,” said Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear. “Indian gaming has been nothing but positive for the tribes, for the city of Tulsa and for the state of Oklahoma.

“This is a big step forward in our growth and strengthens our ability to be self-sufficient.”

The new facilities, which include nearly 66,000 square feet of casino space, will give the Tulsa metro area an estimated 366,000 square feet of casinos.

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said he went on a walk-through of the Osage Nation complex a couple of weeks ago.

“A $160 million investment in a quarter-million square-foot facility. … That, in and of itself, is remarkable,” he told the crowd Wednesday. “When you hear numbers like that at a scale like that, it’s easy to not appreciate the eye for detail that went into every one of those square feet.”

While at the microphone, Bynum singled out longtime Tulsa civic servant Jack Henderson, who was in the audience.

“Jack Henderson served on our City Council longer than anyone has ever served on it in the history of the city of Tulsa,” the mayor said. “Every one of those days, he was advocating for the economic growth of north Tulsa. Now, here we are today.

“It gives me goosebumps to see all the work that people like Jack put in all those years advocating for something like this.”