Caesars Entertainment is putting the finishing touches on its Horseshoe casino in Baltimore, Horseshoe general manager Chad Barnhill said Wednesday. He also shared the latest renderings of the complex, which sits close to the intersection of Interstate 95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
If you are just joining us, Horseshoe is the second casino to open along the MD-295 corridor, which is turning into the epicenter of Maryland’s aggressive expansion of commercialized gaming. Horseshoe will take on Hollywood Charles Town in West Virginia, as well as Maryland Live, which opened two years ago in Hanover, just off the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. MGM Resorts International is expected to join the fray in 2016, with a casino at National Harbor in Fort Washington, farther south on MD-295.
Horseshoe will feature about 100 table games and 2,500 slot machines. It has hired a small army to run the place. Barnhill said Wednesday that the casino will have hired 1,700 to 1,900 workers by the time it opens.
But long-term success is not assured in the saturated mid-Atlantic gaming market, experts say. Hollywood Charles Town is already feeling the effect of the increased competition. And it’s not going to get any better. As my colleague J. Freedom Du Lac reported in February: Roughly half of MGM National Harbor’s gambling revenue — at least $350 million in fiscal 2019 alone — is expected to come from Virginia, most of it from Northern Virginia, a critical market for Hollywood Charles Town.
Stay tuned.