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Old Posted Aug 1, 2019, 10:16 PM
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ardecila ardecila is offline
TL;DR
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: the city o'wind
Posts: 16,356
Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician View Post
By Thompson Center I'm assuming you're all proposing to demo it and build a new casino there?

Because the existing Thompson Center gets tons of sunlight. My understanding is that casino operators generally don't want to have windows.
Traditionally, no... but the research supporting that decision was debunked after Steve Wynn went a different direction at the Bellagio, design-wise, and made a killing. It's more a question of whether the casino operator has an old-school mentality or if they are open to new thinking.

Even a new-school operator would probably close off the exterior walls, but that's more for the same reason a grocery store or department store would do it. There's nothing sinister going on - they don't hate sunlight or want you to lose track of time - it's just that the perimeter of the room is a prime place for merchandise, or slot machines. You wouldn't want to squander that on windows.... but skylights, or clerestory windows that sit up above a row of machines, are totally fine under the new school of thinking.

Because a gaming floor can have partial windows but not full windows, it's better situated above or below grade in a city, but definitely not right at street level.

At the Thompson Center, I imagine a basement-level gaming floor - with blank walls but ample light from above - might do quite nicely. The upper level could be surrounded by fine dining to create the kind of Italian piazza that Helmut Jahn was imitating. Unfortunately, I don't know if the building is large enough to accommodate the 4,000 gaming positions authorized by law.
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Last edited by ardecila; Aug 1, 2019 at 10:26 PM.
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