Snoqualmie Casino begins $400 million expansion project

Last week, Snoqualmie Casino in King County, Washington, began a $400 million expansion and renovation project that is expected to take two years to complete. It will feature a new 210-room luxury hotel, a 2,000-seat event centre, and 11,000 square feet of expanded casino gaming space.

The project started roughly a month after the Snoqualmie City Council authorized a deal between the city and the Snoqualmie Tribe. According to the deal, the tribe agreed to pay the city $6.6 million in exchange for increased sewer service required for construction.

According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe has been considering expansion since the casino debuted in 2008. The upgrades are intended to help the tribe achieve goals such as providing education, health care, and housing to the community.

The tribe is the largest employer in the Snoqualmie Valley, employing about 1,700 people. The tribe will run the new hotel, according to the Snoqualmie Casino spokeswoman. Architectural aspects were inspired by Snoqualmie culture, such as “a modern slant roof hotel design” that represents the tribe’s ancestors’ longhouses.

Cumming Group and Skanska, both Seattle-based construction companies, are leading the project to add a new high-end 210-room hotel to the ground floor. They will also team up to add 11,000 square feet to the casino’s gaming floor, as well as a full-service spa, fitness facility, convention center, parking garage, and two new restaurants.

Meanwhile, Scott Hebert, a senior project manager at Cumming, remarked that the expansion will benefit the local community by creating jobs and providing much-needed hotel, concert, and meeting space.

“We could not be more excited to bring this caliber of resort experience to Snoqualmie,” Hebert said in a press release.

The development is expected to provide 500 construction and resort jobs for tribal members and local communities, with slightly more than 200 of those being hotel and resort jobs. Local subcontractors and tradesmen are being recruited for the project.