Associated Press
ATLANTIC CITY -- Park Place Entertainment Corp., which completed its $3 billion acquisition of the Caesars World
casino empire last week, is wasting no time in taking advantage of its new properties.
The company plans to begin construction within a month on a $25 million expansion of its Wild Wild West casino
on a prime parcel of land that had gone undeveloped in a high-stakes game of Monopoly between the two former rivals.
The addition will include the installation of 300 new slot machines, retail outlets and restaurants. It will be
completed by next fall, according to Wallace Barr, executive vice president of Park Place Entertainment.
"We've already been out there doing test borings and drawing building permits. We got all the long-lead items
in place. Now, it's just a matter of starting," Barr said.
Park Place Entertainment's purchase of Caesars World from Starwood Hotels and Resorts will allow Park Place to
develop the parcel at the corner of the Boardwalk and Arkansas Avenue.
The Park Place-owned parcel is separated from Bally's Park Place by the facade of the 70-year-old Warner Theater,
which was owned by Caesars.
Caesars, which added a 25-story hotel tower in a $280 million expansion two years ago, was unable to build it fronting
the Boardwalk because Park Place Entertainment wouldn't sell the parcel.
Park Place Entertainment, in turn, was blocked from building on it because the theater stood between it and the
Wild Wild West property.
Barr told The Press of Atlantic City the expansion will be completed by Labor Day. It will link Bally's Park Place
with Caesars, marrying the city's most profitable and third-most profitable casinos.
Park Place, the gaming spinoff of Hilton Hotels Corp., is the world's largest casino company, with 29 properties
worldwide under the Bally's, Hilton, Grand, Paris and Caesars brands.
In Atlantic City, it owns the Atlantic City Hilton, Bally's Park Place and, now, Caesars Atlantic City.Polk)
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