GlobeSt.com UPDATE: Deadline Extended for Indiana Casino RFP

FRENCH LICK, IN-This week’s deadline for proposals for a nine-figure destination casino resort here has been pushed back to next week. The RFP for the development was reissued in March after Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts Inc., which was selected by the Indiana Gaming Commission the first time around, walked away from negotiations in late February. For the previous article, click here .Only one group, a pair of Indiana companies not involved in the first round, has said publicly it will submit a proposal. The team is CFC Inc., an affiliate of medical device manufacturer Cook Group Inc. of Bloomington, and Lauth Group Inc., a national real estate development and construction company headquartered in Indianapolis.Lauth Group’s general counsel Vernon Black tell GlobeSt.com that the Lauth-CFC team will submit an estimated $240-million proposal on the new deadline day, April 20. By that deadline, Black says the team will have announced which gaming operator it would use if selected. The team has positioned itself well to win, having gained control over the historic hotel that is to be part of the resort complex. As part of its plan, CFC this week paid Boykin lodging $25 million for the French Lick Springs Resort & Spa, which sits next to where the casino is slated to be built. When asked if he thought the team’s control over the hotel gives it front-runner status, Black declined comment. Two other potential bidders for the casino project are the two runners up from the previous round. They are Orange County Development LLC, a group that includes NBA legend Larry Bird, and Lost River Development LLC, led by France-based casino operator Groupe Tranchant. Neither party could be reached this week for comment and an Indiana Gaming Commission spokesperson did not return a phone call seeking comment on the extension, which sources tell GlobeSt.com was done to accommodate two potential applicants. A decision is tentatively scheduled for June.Regardless, the casino will not float on water like the others in the state, but instead would sit on a manmade island surrounded by a water feature in historic hotel district of French Lick. Indeed, the original plan was for the casino–the last of 11 authorized by the state–to be built on Patoka Lake in Birdseye, IN, until it was discovered that gambling could not occur on a body of water controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. In addition to the casino, the CFC-Lauth plan, calls for a makeover of the French Lick Springs Resort and Spa and its Donald Ross-designed golf course, which hosted the 1924 PGA Championship, and the nearby West Baden Springs Hotel. If CFC-Lauth wins the right to develop the casino, the group says it would be a 10-year undertaking. The group would first renovate the French Lick Springs hotel and golf course into a three-star resort at a cost of $80 million. The $60-million second phase would be the casino, which would be two stories high, and a parking garage. The project’s last phase would be the full restoration of the West Baden hotel. Already partially renovated by CFC at a cost of more than $30 million, the group would invest another $30 million to transform the property into a four-star hotel.Under its proposal, CFC’s 50% interest in the project would be held by a nonprofit charitable foundation. The foundation’s profits from the casino operation would go toward historic preservation, restoration and education in the Orange County region, which was home to some 17 casinos before gambling was banned in Indiana in 1949 and now has one of the state’s highest unemployment rates.