Margaritaville Rising
HALFWAY POINT: The hotel tower, part of the Margaritaville development at River Spirit Resort and Casino, recently reached the halfway mark at 14 floors. The Margaritaville Casino and Restaurant is scheduled to open in fall 2016, with the 27-story hotel tower opening in late 2016.
RIP STELL for GTR Newspapers
As construction continues for the Margaritaville at River Spirit Resort and Casino (formally known as the River Spirit Casino Phase II expansion), the hotel tower recently reached the halfway mark at 14 floors. The Margaritaville Casino and Restaurant is scheduled to open in fall 2016, with the 27-story hotel tower opening in late 2016.
The luxury hotel tower will be a 27-story reflective glass tower, featuring 483 rooms and suites, with a fitness center, a spa, retail stores and a business center. It will rise 316 feet above the ground and contain 25 floors of guest rooms.
The development will also include a large pool deck and riverfront entertainment area, with poolside cabanas, palm trees, fire pits and the Landshark Landing beach bar with swim-up seating.
The Margaritaville-themed casino will be 50,000 square feet with 850 of the latest gaming machines and 27 live table/poker games. There will be a two-story Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville restaurant and bar featuring a seaplane and a volcano, erupting lava into a giant blender. Together, these amenities will feature seating for more than 400, including two outdoor decks overlooking the Arkansas River with additional seating for more than 150. The property will also hold a retail outlet with t-shirts, souvenirs and Margaritaville merchandise.
The development’s convention venue will offer 30,000 square feet of event and meeting space including a ballroom, conference rooms and board rooms with state-of-the-art audio and visual capabilities.
For entertainment, the casino’s showroom will offer theater-style seating for 2,500 guests, plus suites and a lounge. The venue will expand to 3,000 seats for sporting events.
Additional food and beverage venues will include a fine dining steakhouse, a 24-hour, restaurant, the 5 O’Clock Somewhere Bar and additional options.
A new attached parking structure will be constructed providing 1,500 additional parking spaces.
Approximately 350,000 cubic yards of dirt were relocated from the Arkansas River to the new building location to construct the building pad.
Total construction costs for the project are $329 million with total costs, including design, being $365 million.
The economic impact during the two-year construction phase to the greater Tulsa region is reported to be $303.5 million with 1,800 construction jobs provided. Once construction is completed, the development will bring 800 permanent full-time positions plus 1,000 indirect jobs to the area with an ongoing annual economic impact of $135 million.
The architect for the development is Dallas-based . Manhattan Construction and Redstone Construction are overseeing construction with Program Management Group Native as project manager.
Updated 09-28-2015
READER COMMENTS
