Saracen Raises Ante: $230M Event Center & Hotel Heads for 2025 Debut

The event center takes shape at Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff. (Karen E. Segrave)

Most of the remaining pieces of the Saracen Casino Resort are falling into place with the $230 million construction of an event center and 13-story hotel tower. Quietly started in October, the work will produce 326 guest rooms as part of a 440,000-SF expansion that will more than triple the size of the casino complex in Pine Bluff.

The new facilities will push the Quapaw Nation’s Saracen investment to more than $500 million when the finishing touches are complete by summer 2025. But the cost of building the event center and hotel won’t require leveraging the casino with more debt.

“To date, all the additional construction has been paid for by cash,” said Carlton Saffa, chief market officer for Saracen. “There will be no additional financing required.”

The casino’s cash flow has covered the first $50 million of new construction costs, and Saffa expects it will cover the full costge of all new construction. Flintco, the Tulsa general contracting firm that oversaw construction of the $108 million Oaklawn casino-hotel, is managing Saracen’s hotel-event center project.

Saracen’s financing was reworked in December 2021 by replacing a six-year junk bond issue of $285 million that backed construction of the casino with a $375 million funding agreement split between a $275 million term loan and a $100 million line of credit. That funding package remains in place.

“The property requires no more debt,” Saffa said of the 300-acre Saracen development. “We don’t ever expect to utilize the full $100 million. We may access the line of credit some months and not others, depending how big the construction bill is in a given month.”

Despite construction costs escalating from an original price tag of $155 million, the big-picture plan continues to not only avoid any new debt but to pay off all of the casino’s debt as expeditiously as possible.

“Goal No. 1 is for the tribe to own Saracen free and clear, a very conservative approach to business,” Saffa said.

The money machine is the 200,000-SF casino, supported by a quartet of restaurants: the Red Oak Steakhouse, Legends Sports Bar, Quapaw Kitchens Buffet and Saracen Express. Opened in 2020, the casino is home to an 80,000-SF gaming area complete with more than 1,700 slot machines, 40 table games and a dedicated poker room.

“Building this during the height of COVID was insane, but we had to proceed,” Saffa said of enduring pandemic challenges.

Once the event center and hotel tower are open, attention will move to the last item on the Saracen construction checklist: building a 650-space parking deck envisioned to help boost patronage on rainy days.

Waiting to build the parking deck reduces the construction clutter at Saracen and reduces the financial strain on paying for new work out of casino operations.

“We like the cash flow modeling for the hotel and event center,” Saffa said. “We don’t want to add to our expenses.”

Once the project is up and running, increased staffing at the hotel and event center is expected to push Saracen’s employment from 800 toward 1,000 by the end of 2025.

Entertaining Elbow Room

For now, the focus of construction is on the event center. At this stage, the two-story addition is a roofless stack of hefty concrete slabs and steel taking shape on the north side of the casino.

The project will feature a seating capacity of 1,600 for concerts supported by custom stage and rigging or accommodate 1,000 at tables. It will also include executive office space on the top floor with administrative offices, employee dining facilities and warehouse space attached to shipping and receiving on the ground floor.

“As we shell out the event center, we’ll move people into the first floor,” Saffa said of adding walls and a roof by late summer. “Gaming is our primary business, and we need the office space in the event center yesterday.”

To facilitate the movement of offices, new construction includes a freestanding 8,600-SF building that will house the laundry services for the hotel and casino as well as space to relocate the casino’s cold food storage.

According to Saffa, the new building is a $5 million project that should be structurally complete this summer with final finish-out scheduled for 2025.

The new construction will allow the consolidation of Saracen’s office staff, which is scattered around the casino and a mile away at the Pine Bluff Plaza.

The Quapaw Nation leased and then bought the 114,855-SF retail center at 2701-2720 E. Harding Blvd. for $1.1 million to house its finance, compliance and human resources staff in space originally developed for a Kroger grocery store. Space formerly occupied by a Kmart store is used for Saracen warehouse needs.

“The back office of a casino looks more like an accounting firm or a bank than you might imagine,” Saffa said. “We’ve never all been in the same building.”

Saracen uses most of Pine Bluff Plaza and leases space to a pair of remaining retail tenants: Shoe Dept. Encore and Dollar Tree.

Hotel Tower

After the event center is in the dry with walls and roof, construction activity will shift to erecting 12 floors of rooms and suites atop the hotel lobby. That process will require tower cranes that will rise as the vertical work climbs higher.

Once the exterior construction is complete, the interior finish-out work will begin on a top-down, floor-by-floor basis with the lobby details last.

“We’re overbuilding the quality of the hotel,” Saffa said. “If we don’t build it posh, we’re going to look back and regret it. We will construct the nicest hotel in Arkansas, period. It won’t be the biggest hotel in the South, but it will be the nicest, I believe.”

With nightly room rates projected to typically range from $100 to $200, the hotel is viewed as a drawing card for overnight stays that generate extended play in the casino.

The hotel also will expand marketing opportunities to draw customers to Saracen from farther away.

“Almost half of our rooms are going to be suites,” Saffa said. “We don’t intend to rent rooms during the weekend. We’ll probably have a few weekend rooms available, but I view renting rooms as Plan B.

“I look forward to comping rooms versus renting them. We’d rather give them away to Players Club members than rent them to casual customers.

“The hotel broadens the range to attract visitors and allows the Little Rock visitors to extend their stay. About 70% of our customers are from greater Little Rock.”

The balance of Saracen patrons come from Pine Bluff, elsewhere in southeast Arkansas and out of state, primarily Mississippi and Louisiana.

“When I see someone from Greenwood, Mississippi, I beam from ear to ear,” Saffa said. “It means they drove past eight casinos to get here. That’s the ultimate compliment.”