Gulf Coast casinos begin reopening as clean-up from Hurricane Isaac continues

Hurricane Isaac’s landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi earlier this week may have coincided with the seven-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but the results were far different.

Officials from the Mississippi Gaming Commission have given Gulf Coast casino properties permission to reopen.

About half the casinos in the Biloxi/Gulfport region are back up and running, including MGM Resorts International’s Beau Rivage and the Boyd Gaming Corp.’s IP Biloxi. The remaining casinos are expected to reopen in time for Labor Day.

"Not all casinos were affected the same by the hurricane and therefore circumstances are different as they relate to reopening," Mississippi Gaming Commission Executive Director Allen Godfrey told the Biloxi Sun Herald.

In Louisiana, Boomtown New Orleans, which is owned by Pinnacle Entertainment, is expected to reopen Friday pending approval from the state gaming board. Casinos in the Baton Rouge and other parts of New Orleans remain closed.

Hurricane Katrina all but wiped out the Gulf Coast industry. The storm was responsible for the closure of more than a dozen casinos in Louisiana and Mississippi and billions of dollars in damages and rebuilding costs. Several properties never reopened.

Hurricane Isaac didn’t cause the devastation to the casino industry.

“In Mississippi, it appears that most of the properties came through the storm relatively unscathed and we would expect casinos in the southern Louisiana markets to open in the coming days,” Union Gaming Group managing director Bill Lerner told investors. “That said, particularly in southern Louisiana there still is flooding and many communities are without electricity, so we wouldn’t expect business levels at local casinos to quickly return to normalized levels.”