MS Coast casinos fight state decision that allows gambling across from Biloxi’s sand beach
Mississippi Coast casinos in Biloxi and Gulfport are not too happy about RW Development’s plans for a gambling venture, this one on Biloxi’s central beach.
Treasure Bay in Biloxi and Island View Casino Resort in Gulfport, along with the Mississippi Gaming & Hospitality Association, are appealing the Mississippi Gaming Commission’s decision to approve a casino site that RW has been angling to secure for 15 years on the northeast corner of Veterans Avenue and U.S. 90.
Treasure Bay, Island View and the association, which includes all 13 casinos in Harrison and Hancock counties, have filed their appeal of the Gaming Commission’s decision in Harrison County Circuit Court, where Judge Larry Bourgeois is presiding over the case.
The casinos and association claim that RW does not meet the state’s legal requirements for operating a casino on land.
Hurricane changed Mississippi casino laws
Because Hurricane Katrina’s storm surge in 2005 wiped out casinos then required to sit on the water, the Legislature amended the law shortly afterward. The amended law allows “cruise vessels” with gambling licenses to relocate their operations to land no more than 800 feet from the water’s edge.
“Stated differently,” the appeal says, (the law) “requires the gaming applicant to prove that its gaming site was legal prior to Hurricane Katrina.” RW didn’t hold a gaming license before Katrina and the property it bought after the hurricane was not a legal gambling site before the storm, the appeal argues.
However, other casino sites have been approved where operators did not have cruise vessels or gambling licenses before Hurricane Katrina, including the Scarlet Pearl in D’Iberville, which won site approval in 2014 for property off Back Bay.
An author of the 2005 gambling bill amendment, former Rep. Jim Simpson, clarified the Legislature’s intent in a 2008 letter, saying, “ . . . it was clearly contemplated and anticipated that sites such as RW Development’s would be legal sites . . . “
The Mississippi Gaming Commission, represented by Special Assistant Attorney General David Minton, argues that site approval was “supported by the evidence, properly applied applicable law to the facts, and that the decision is in all respects proper and should be affirmed by this Court.”
RW Development wants to join court appeal
RW Development is not a party to the appeal, but has filed a motion to intervene in the case.
RW started buying property north and south of the beach highway, on both sides of Veterans Avenue, in 2006, after the state decided to allow casinos on land. It’s property south of the highway adjoins the sand beach.
The Mississippi Gaming Commission on three previous occasions refused to grant RW site approval for a casino because the company did not control property to the water’s edge. RW has been operating an entertainment center and amusement park on its property north of U.S. 90.
The company, owned by Ray Woolridge of Atlanta, established a toehold for a casino in 2019 by signing a lease with the city of Biloxi to build a pier on the Mississippi Sound at the foot of Veterans Avenue, a road the city owns. The city’s property rights extend into the Mississippi Sound to the Biloxi navigation channel. Hurricane Katrina destroyed the pier that the city had built at this location.
Harrison County joined a lease with RW and the city in 2021 that included a portion of the sand beach, which the county maintains.
Because of RW’s city and county leases, the Gaming Commission was satisfied the company controlled property to the water’s edge and should be granted site approval for a casino north of the highway. The commission also required that RW build the Veterans Avenue pier.
MS Supreme Court sides with Biloxi, Harrison County
In their court appeal, the existing casinos and gaming association call the commission’s decision “arbitrary and capricious.” They argue that RW doesn’t control the property to the water’s edge because it is shared with the public. The state owns the beach and submerged water bottoms along bays and the Mississippi Sound, called public trust tidelands. The Secretary of State’s Office holds the property in trust for the public.
But the state Supreme Court has found that the Secretary of State’s Office does not have sole authority over the sand beach or waterfront property that abuts city streets. State laws give the city and county the right to lease the property in question to RW for a pier, the court ruled 6-3 in March 2023 in a lawsuit the secretary of state filed against RW, Biloxi and Harrison County over the lease.
Most other casinos lease public trust tidelands from the state. In an uproar over RW’s lease, the state Legislature has stepped in. House and Senate bills are pending that would give the secretary of state sole authority to lease public property on the Sound and bays for casinos.
Attorneys for all parties declined to comment on the pending litigation.
