Betting on bigger venue
Tesuque Pueblo closes Camel Rock casino; new facility to open on Black Friday
After more than two decades, Camel Rock Casino closed its doors at midnight Tuesday, ending one chapter in New Mexico gambling history but marking the start of a new one for Tesuque Pueblo, which is betting that a new and bigger casino just eight miles away is a gamble worth taking.
The new 72,000-square-foot Tesuque Casino on tribal land off U.S. 84/285 adjacent to the Santa Fe Opera, one of the city’s premier cultural institutions, is scheduled to open at 5 p.m. Nov. 23 — the day after Thanksgiving.
“Opening night attendance is unknown, of course, but we expect attendance to be around 5,000,” John Kubiak, chairman of the Pueblo of Tesuque Development Corp., said Tuesday.
He expects the multimilliondollar project to not only generate financial resources for the tribe but benefit the regional economy.
“Our hope is that this is an economic engine that’s going to help provide tribal services to the tribal members and also to create opportunities for nontribal members up and down the corridor there,” Kubiak said.
The old, 50,000-square-foot casino, opened in September 1995, employed 200 people. The new operation will employ 275, Kubiak said.
As for what happens to the old Camel Rock Casino property, Kubiak would only say that the pueblo intends to “redeploy it into some other endeavor.”
“Final plans to repurpose it have not been formulated,” he said. “We’re looking at a number of different opportunities, both on a temporary and longer-term basis, but I’m not at liberty to discuss what those are at this point.”
The proximity of the new casino, built on a site once occupied by a flea market, to the Santa Fe Opera’s famed open-air theater fueled concerns about how the project might affect the performance venue. Kubiak said pueblo leaders and opera representatives worked closely together “from start to finish.”
“I think our relationship, both sides, is very positive,” he said. “I think we’re going to have a positive impact on opera patrons who can enjoy our casino either before or after the opera. I think there’s a lot of synergies that we’ve been talking back and forth with the opera on. We are excited to explore our continued, common interests.”
Construction of the new casino went smoothly, he said. Albuquerque-based Bradbury Stamm Construction was the lead contractor, and Kubiak said the pueblo asked the company to hire local subcontractors as much as possible.
“The construction ran absolutely perfectly on time and on schedule,” he said. “We couldn’t be more pleased with the decision to use local folks to the extent that we could. We also had a lot of cooperation from the weather.”
Our hope is that this is an economic engine that’s going to help provide tribal services to the tribal members and also to create opportunities for nontribal members up and down the corridor there.” John Kubiak, Tesuque Development Corp. chairman
Kubiak said the casino operators going forward plan to buy locally, whether its food or basic supplies.
“We want to have a really positive impact on the community in general and be good corporate citizens,” he said.
While the new casino has “many, many new machines,” Kubiak said slot machines from the old casino were transported to the new location. Not having a casino in operation for a number of days, he said, was part of the transition plan.
“We never like to be not open to our customers, but it’s just a fact of life that some of the equipment and machines are being relocated at this point in time,” he said. “There’s no way around the fact that we’re just going to be down for a few days.”
Kubiak described the new building, which has giant windows to take advantage of the vistas north of Santa Fe, as “timeless.”
“We’ve got beautiful views of the Sangre de Cristos,” he said. “I think you’re going to be very, very impressed.”