Happy Valley Casino leadership and local officials looked back on the venue’s development and ahead to its future during its grand opening event on Friday afternoon.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony for the casino in the former Macy’s anchor spot at the Nittany Mall came two weeks after it began welcoming guests and nearly seven years since founding partner Ira Lubert won the auction for what would be Pennsylvania’s fifth category 4 “mini-casino” license.
“When you walk through those doors, you’ll see the result of a lot of people’s hard work that went into this,” said Lubert, a Penn State alumnus and former university trustee who battled years of legal challenges from a competing company before construction on the casino could begin in 2025.
The ceremony also featured the presentation of checks to two local nonprofit organizations from the net proceeds of the state-required test days on April 24-25, prior to the casino’s official opening.
The YMCA of Centre County and State College Food Bank both received donations of $81,124.94.
“We certainly appreciate the funds,” Scott Mitchell, president and CEO of the Centre County Y, said. “We were pretty surprised by the amount, to be honest with you. We’re going to be able to do a lot of work with this amount of money. So I just want to thank everyone that worked really hard over the last seven years to get this done.”
Happy Valley Casino opened with 600 slot machines, 30 table games, a full-service restaurant, bar and quick-serve food and beverage outlet. It can expand up to 750 slots and can add 10 more table games after one year.
Since its opening, 24,000 people have walked through the doors and more than 10,000 have signed up for the casino’s Players Club, general manager Eric Pearson said.
“We’ve been paying close attention to the feedback that we’ve been receiving,” Pearson told StateCollege.com “It’s still very early… We’ve heard a lot of real positive feedback about the restaurants and people enjoying the menu and the quality and service in there. We’ve heard people really appreciate that we’re non-smoking. There’s only, I think, two other casinos in the commonwealth that are fully non-smoking. So we’re happy to be the third.”
The casino employs more than 360 people, about 70% of whom are full-time, Pearson said. All of its dealers were trained in the casino’s own Dealer School, located inside the mall.
“Our dealers are almost entirely brand new to the positions, and that was something that we were maybe slightly nervous to see how that was going to work out,” he said. “But one of the biggest surprises we had is is really how understanding our players have been. Our players know that we’re new, they know the dealers are new, and it’s actually been a really good sort of point of conversation for a lot of our new dealers and players to talk about. Everyone’s been so much more understanding about sort of us getting our sea legs under us than than I had thought.”
Friday’s ceremony was held just outside the casino’s mall interior entrance, which is not currently open for public access.
Among those in attendance were Lubert’s partners in the casino’s development group SC Gaming: Rick Sokolov, a Penn State trustee and real estate investor, and local developers Ara Kervandjian, who is seeking to acquire and redevelop much of the rest of the mall, and Bob Poole, whose Poole Anderson Construction was the general contractor for the casino.
Also on hand were College Township officials and former state Sen. Jake Corman, as well as leadership from Happy Valley Casino’s majority owner, Saratoga Casino Holdings.
Saratoga also operates casinos in New York, Mississippi and Colorado.
“Our success is directly dependent on our ability to be an upstanding member and leader in the community,” Saratoga CEO Sam Gerrity said. “We do this through jobs, local partnerships and, of course, tax revenue, among many other possibilities. We are nothing without the Happy Valley community. And we do not take this opportunity and this responsibility of this opportunity lightly.”
For patrons, Friday’s grand opening included the chance to win part of $10,000 in prizes, with 25 winners receiving $200 worth of slot play and five getting $1,000 in cash. It appeared to be a big draw, with a steady stream of people entering and the casino’s main parking lot on the East College Avenue side entrance packed.
College Township Councilman Eric Bernier, a lifelong resident of the area, said he has been pleased to often see a full parking lot since the casino’s opening.
“It’s really great to see that kind of energy returning to the mall,” Bernier said. “It’s been a long time. I think we have to go back 30 or 40 years since I’ve seen the parking lot that full. And that was only during the Christmas holiday season.”
Pearson, who previously managed the formerly Lubert-owned Valley Forge Casino Resort, said he initially did not foresee the potential for success when Lubert first discussed the possibility of a State College area casino with him in 2017.
But he quickly came to Lubert’s point of view.
“I did what I think a lot of national developers and folks outside of this community do, which is to really undervalue the strength of Centre County, the State College area, and all it took was one trip,” Pearson said. “I came over, drove around, went through Penn State, the surrounding communities, and immediately I saw what he saw. And that is the potential in this community, and the strength, and quite frankly, how underserved this community is in a lot of areas, especially when it comes to entertainment.”
Happy Valley Casino’s hours are 10 a.m. to 2 a.m.. Table games are open 4 p.m. to midnight and sit-down restaurant Aces Social is open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
