Caesars adds tables games, increases scope of $400 million Horseshoe Baltimore

Less than 48 hours after Maryland voters approved expanded gaming, Caesars Entertainment Corp. made good on plans to increase the scope of its downtown Baltimore casino project.

The company said the casino would be renamed Horseshoe Baltimore and include between 80 and 110 table games, plus a World Series of Poker-branded poker room.

The project also grew in cost from $300 million to $400. Caesars officials said the expansion would require another 500 employees.

Maryland’s Question 7, which passed Tuesday by 52 percent to 48 percent margin, gave the state approval to license a sixth casino and allows the state’s existing and planned five slot machine-only casinos to add table games.

Caesars, which backed passage of Question 7, said the addition of table games would lead to a reconfiguration of the two-story South Baltimore casino’s floor, which will remain at 110,000 square feet.

At a news conference, Caesars President for Enterprise Shared Services John Payne said the company uses the Horseshoe name for its casinos outside Las Vegas with table games. Horseshoe Baltimore will be Caesars’ 53rd casino and the company’s seventh with the Horseshoe brand. The company opened Horseshoe Cleveland in May and is planning the opening of Horseshoe Cincinnati next year.

The company’s Baltimore casino and its two Ohio projects are in partnership with Rock Gaming of Detroit.

Construction on Horseshoe Baltimore is expected to start next year with the opening planned from the middle of 2014. The casino will not include a hotel, but it will have several restaurants, which could include some run by local Baltimore-area restaurateurs, Payne said.