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Casino hotels are filling their rooms, restaurants and gaming spaces with design that’s more about mainstream glamour than sideshow glitz
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By Tom Zeit
When guests enter the lobby of the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods in Mashantucket, Conn., the first thing they hear is the rush of a cascading fountain. That's how much casino hotels have changed. Although this new 825-room hotel has 50,000 square feet of gaming space, it's the sounds of the natural world, not the mechanized humming and dinging of slot machines, that register the first impression.
Hard-sell casino spaces are so yesterday. The better bet now is on super-cool hotels that incorporate casinos, entertainment, celebrity restaurants, convention facilities, spas and high-end shops as stylish amenities.
MGM Grand at Foxwoods marks an evolutionary advance in the Las Vegas hotel-within-in-a-hotel model. Its owner, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, had covered the basic markets with Foxwoods' existing hotels: the AAA Four Diamond-rated Grand Pequot Tower, the comfortable Great Cedar Hotel and the New England-inspired Two Trees Inn. They had the draw of North America's largest casino and extensive entertainment facilities. But they also faced substantial new competition coming on line from the handsome Water Club at The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, as well as the newly opened Casino of the Wind at Connecticut neighbor Mohegan Sun designed by Rockwell Group and WATG.
Rather than just adding on a hip tower and calling it a new destination, the Pequots opted to develop a new luxury hotel. Their design brief mandated a high-end concept that could open up the meetings, incentive, conference and exhibition (MICE) market and a younger demographic of weekenders.
Since casino business isn't MGM Grand at Foxwood's only play, the design initiatives align more with those of a traditional hotel. The lobby, not the casino, is the focal point of the MGM Grand and its look. "The most dramatic thing about the lobby is that we were able to gain so much volume in there," says James Carry, principal and design director with Dallas-based interior architectural design firm Wilson Associates. "The scale of the space is amazing; most casinos don't have that."
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