Harrah’s Entertainment Inc. has been selected to manage a state-owned casino in Sumner County. It will be built at near the Mulvane interchange of the Kansas Turnpike. The 4-3 vote was cast Friday morning by the Kansas Lottery Gaming Facility Review Board.
Marvel Gaming and Penn National Gaming were in the running for the 15-year contract. Penn was picked earlier to manage the Cherokee County facility. Both will undergo a background check by the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission. The review could take several months.
Shelley Hansel, director of the Wellington Area Chamber of Commerce, was clearly outraged by the decision in an interview with NewsCow’s media partner KSOK radio.
She said she believed the state of Kansas looked only at dollar figures and disregarded the will of the people of Sumner County. The state, Hansel said, "basically spit in our face."
"I’m sick to my stomach," she said in a telephone interview from Topeka.
A law enacted last year created four state-owned casinos. The other two are in Wyandotte and Ford counties. The board will decide next month who gets those contracts.
Four casinos are already in operation between the Kansas-Oklahoma boarder and Newkirk and a fifth is planned on the site of the former Chilocco Indian School.
