Gun Lake Casino Open for Business! - Will things slow down some time soon?

I guess everyone is not really realizing how much more busy this Casino is than every other one you've ever went to, especially the first few weeks and the very high percentage of people that seemed to be smoking that were there. In all the years I've been to Casinos in Las Vegas for the ICSC conventions and the ones here in Michigan just to check them out I have never seen a Casino even close to having every gaming position being used in the entire facility for at least an 8 hour shift on Thursday.

When I visited the other Casinos I didn't even spend my free $10 they give you in Acme right now at the tortoise casino. When I was there a few weeks ago you could have shot a cannon through the place about 10:00pm, and there were definately more employees than customers it seemed.  I was able to get a top floor room with a view 8 stories up of the gorgeous agricultural and outdoor surrounding.

The Casino in Bradley has about 10 people for every gaming position (table or slot) housed in the facility. The one in Mt. Pleasant that used to do $200 Million plus per year had only 3.2 people per gaming position. Many more machines, less people.  The Casinos in the rest of Michigan, aside from Downtown Detroit will have less than 3.2 people per gaming position. Much bigger facilities, far fewer people especially with money to spend within the same area. Now in the summer, Traverse can capitalize from the Global Tourism they can promote, at the same time Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo should be able to offset that with a percentage of their convention visitors that will take the shuttle 24 miles south to the Gun Lake exit. Remember, it could have been 16 miles from Downtown in Dorr if the people that went to the tribes meeting there, led by Mr. Boersma as local resident, made the tribe feel like they were on the edge of literally being run out of town there.

The demographic paramaters used to estimate were based upon an hours drive of the location I believe. That's why that location suck so much for a Casino and retail outlet shopping center and Cabela's and everything else.  It appears to be in the middle of no where, but really in the middle of everywhere! It's the median population density point in W. Michigan and is so much closer to South Bend and Chicago than more other places that are also close to Grand Rapids.

Who knows how long it might be this busy? One thing for sure I gotta believe all the other Casinos around Michigan are looking around their floor and noticing a fairly large decrease in their traffic. You have to understand the people of this area that are going to spend money at the Casino no matter what - they have been taking their money and dumping it into the lap and jobs of businesses and employees in other places in Michigan!

All of that wealth was being drained away to other areas. Now at least we get our neighboring Tribe that is friendly not only to Casino business but also to other things like manufacturing, tourism, research and development, recreation, etc. get the money, pay the jobs, develop things around them.  They have always said they look forward to other types of ventures with us as friends in the future, but they certainly don't have to and after being delayed for 10 years why should they be nice to us?

Because several of the Tribal Councils past and present are a remenant of Christians people raised up with the beliefs of their Methodist Mission as well as the age old traditions and stories handed down generation to generation.

Despite this area delaying them for ten years, causing this irreparable harm to the tribe and at least the 750 employees that started working there a week or two ago instead of years ago, they hopefully will still work with us to make this the biggest destination we can make it be.

Remember this one thing in closing! The highest percentage of local people coming to the facility is right now.  There is a huge number of people within 1 hour, however, right now is when we are going to get the highest amount of traffic from those people possible. 

It is our job to shake these people's hands and realize that in the opponents to the Casino's mind the biggest stab the Casino will ever take into the local people visiting is right now.  It is our job as neighbors and neighboring businesses to take advantage of that excitement and leverage it into something that is news-making for 5 states around work together to do whatever we can to bring people in from outside the 1 hour radius.  Other Casinos have done this to those in our area that have enjoyed gaming for the last 10 - 20 years now.

The way to do that it to invest into making sure that good fits with adjacent parcels of land occur like that will help bring more visitors to their Casino as well as tourists traveling to participate in other events, activities and even new developments some day ANYWHERE along the "US-131 RECREATIONAL CORRIDOR". 

Nothing can really occur other than the Casino in Bradley and exit 61 at this point however as the obstacle that has to be overcome is that before we can do any of this we need about 11 - 14 Million dollars worth of sewer water and roadways just to get started.  

The sewer and water is already at DORR along with 2-3000 acres of land that they service. There are also utilities just to the north in Wayland. In Bradley, however, we have NO utilities of any kind of us to develop anything! The Casino built their own utilities for their facilities and potential growth but had no reason to build large enough systems to service the entire area which now sits undeveloped without utilities.

We can accomplish much more by working together. If you have an idea or concept, conections or money to invest give me a call at your earliest convenience. Thanks,. Brian Silvernail             616-437-1883      .

Grand Rapids returns to Global Prominance as a Convention Facility like when we were the Furniture Capital of the World? How?

GUN LAKE CASINO'S SUCCESS COULD HELP GRAND RAPIDS WIN BACK GLORY AS NOT JUST A NATIONAL, BUT GLOBAL CONVENTION LOCATION!

Why couldn't this new Gun Lake Casino located south of Grand Rapids along the highest RV traveled N/S freeway east of the Mississippi, help Grand Rapids  leverage this flurry of activity in a dead economy into proudly again becoming the one of the very TOP CONVENTION CITIES IN THE WORLD as the Gateway to the playground of our Nation and Furniture Convention Capital of the World just as we were in the video I've posted a link to?

Beginning where I-94 crosses US-131 in Kalamazoo, drawing people north on US-131 to visit our awesome new Casino en route to the great playground of our nation rather than having people from Chicago go north on US-31 to get up north and rather than the people from Detroit and Cleveland driving up I-75? I know it's a longer treck for everyone without first extending US-131 to I-80. But if US-131 is perceived to be the "Recreational Corridor" that it is with much nicer recreational and tourism draws than those along I-75 or S-31, even though we don't have the big lake, if a "Toll road to the Toll Road" was financed and constructed, we could also pull people up US-131 from Indianapolis.

What can we do to turn our economy around and take back our state from the welfare roles of the nation?  Let's do it!

If West Michigan and downtown Grand Rapids would change their attitude and work with this Tribe's leaders, we could leverage this flurry of activity into promotions that would help us regain even more of our prior grandeur as a Convention Town, and even propel us over the top to become even more of a Global Destination for conventions than we have been since when we were the Furniture Capital of the World with huge conventions 2 times per year. Can you believe we had over 3 million square feet of show space within five blocks of the Pantlin Hotel back then? That's three times what we have now, and three times as much as the Las Vegas Convention Facility attached to the Hilton! But that was back in 1922!

If Grand Rapids and West Michigan would work with this Tribe, we can take all that back. We can pull cash money from a much larger area than just Grand Rapids and maybe even around the world! It will be hard to pull much more money out of local visitors of the Casino than what is being done right now when it opens. If so, how do we get people from elsewhere to come visit and spend their money, even other currencies here in West Michigan?

What would be so bad about that everyone? Would some be jealous of how much money they might make? Well, why don't we start to focus on how much money we could make by doing additional things to get tourist here from all over the world rather than worrying about others! If we can't figure out how to be more successful in our business as the Gun Lake Casino's success begins to become legendary within a 5 state area, we get the best chance of leveraging their success into success for ourselves as well.

Why not? Only if we want to cry in our soup and be mad about it all can we miss the opportunity at this point! Let's partner with the MSU Hospitality program in East Lansing, study the possibilities, then have them and the owner's of the Casino help teach us how to be a Region of Hospitality, not alienation of those from different countries or beliefs! Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to tell people we should all change our beliefs, or religion or all become radical islamists for heaven's sake! I'm just saying, these people are our neighbors and they've been here and taken care of this land far before we were even here. Why can't we get along and leverage the ONE THING OUR GOVERNMENT HAS GIVEN THEM IN EXCHANGE FOR OUR WRONGS AGAINST THEIR PEOPLE AND TURN IT INTO SOMETHING THAT HELPS US AS WELL!

Watch the video and enjoy even if you don't like what the Casino is doing or might do in the future. All things aside, a lot of that video is the same sort of stuff they use to promote our area now also, but we lost the Furniture Capital destination to North Carolina probably to our "that will never change" attitude and our much colder winters.