Kent’s one and only casino will close in March.
The Great American Casino, 20500 108th Ave. S.E., in Panther Lake, is scheduled to close by mid-March. The casino’s 93 employees were notified recently about the shutdown.
“Essentially, it’s been unprofitable for the last couple of years,” said David Fretz, president of Great American Gaming Corp., a subsidiary of Great Canadian Gaming Corp., of Richmond, British Columbia.
The company’s locations in Tukwila, Lakewood and Everett will remain open, Fretz said. A handful of employees at the Kent location might get jobs at the other sites.
The casino offers table card games such as blackjack, baccarat and poker.
An interior renovation of the Kent casino in June 2013 failed to attract enough more customers to make the business profitable. The closure of an Albertson’s store and a liquor store in the last two years at the same strip mall took away traffic, Fretz said.
Great American opened the Kent casino in 2003. The business sat in unincorporated Kent until Panther Lake residents in 2010 voted to annex to the city of Kent.
Kent city officials allowed the casino to operate under a grandfather clause because city code bans casinos. The Kent City Council approved a gambling tax reduction in 2013 that dropped the city’s tax rate from 11 to 7 percent on gross revenues.
“It helped somewhat but it wasn’t sufficient,” said Fretz, who lobbied the council for the tax reduction after the casino had net operating losses of $649,177 in 2011 and $533,038 in 2012.
The casino paid about $300,000 in gambling taxes to the city in 2013 and about $200,000 in 2014, Fretz said.
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