Casino Queen May Get a Makeover

Hotel and casino owners Columbia Sussex Corp., agreed last week to buy the Tropicana casino operator Aztar Corp. for more than 1.9 billion dollars, announced on Wednesday that it will acquire a privately held Illinois casino for 200 million dollars in cash.

Fort Mitchell, the Kentucky based Columbia Sussex said the agreement to acquire the Casino Queen, a hotel and riverboat casino complex in East St. Louis, Illinois, is now under review by the Illinois gaming board. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

The company said that it plans to spend about 60 million dollars to transform the Casino Queen into a state of the art land based casino with a floating casino floor, which is located directly across from the St. Louis Gateway Arch .

Columbia said the final transaction will complement its current portfolio of eight casinos nicely in Louisiana, Mississippi and Nevada.

The deal with Aztar, also expected to close by the end of the year, will be added to the Tropicana casino resorts in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, the Ramada Express casino hotel in Laughlin, Nevada, and the Casino Aztar riverboat casino in Evansville, Indiana.

Columbia has said that it has applied for a gaming license in Illinois to finalize the Casino Queen transaction, and is seeking gaming licenses in both New Jersey and Indiana to complete the Aztar transaction.