Petersburg Casino Calling Local Businesses for Roundtable Chat on Partnership Opportunities
Posted on: July 8, 2025, 01:11h.
Last updated on: August 4, 2025, 08:23h.
- Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia is under construction in Petersburg
- The $600 million casino is slated to open in 2027
- Cordish is seeking local business partners
The developers behind the $600 million Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia in Petersburg are looking to partner with area businesses.
Last November, voters in Petersburg overwhelmingly backed a plan from Baltimore-based Cordish Companies to bring a resort casino to the Virginia city that’s roughly 25 miles south of Richmond.
Cordish, along with its local partner Bruce Smith Enterprise, is currently constructing a temporary 75K-square-foot facility that will house 900 slot machines and 33 live-dealer table games. The provisional casino area will operate until the $600 million resort casino opens in 2027.
Next Monday, July 14, an event titled “Coffee & the Casino” will be hosted by the Petersburg Area Regional Tourism (PART). The discussion is designed for local hospitality-related businesses and organizations, including hotels, bed and breakfasts, entertainment venues and organizers, recreational sites, sports facilities, museums, restaurants, florists, retail shops, and art galleries and artists.
The invitation-only event will give local businesses a chance to meet with representatives from Live! to “share valuable information and insight into how we can all benefit from this development,” PART said.
Interested? Apply here. The Coffee & the Casino discussion will be held at the Petersburg Public Library at 201 W. Washington St.
Petersburg Casino Development
Virginia’s 2020 gaming law allowed city officials in Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Richmond to field casino proposals, select one, and then ask their constituents to sign off on the development. All but Richmond took advantage of their casino designations.
After Richmonders twice rejected a casino development, Virginia lawmakers agreed to relocate the unissued gaming concession south to Petersburg where public support for slots and table games was much stronger. Cordish and Bruce Smith presented a $600 million casino resort blueprint, with a possible subsequent $800 million mixed-use expansion phase, to Petersburg voters who backed the project through a local referendum with 82% support.
Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia is being built near Interstate 95 at Wagner Road. The permanent casino will have 1,600 slots, 61 tables, a sportsbook, and a 200-room hotel.
Resort amenities are to include eight restaurants, a pool complex and fitness center, a convention center, and a 4,000-seat theater.
Local Partnerships
Cordish and Bruce Smith have pledged to become integrated into the Petersburg community and bring area businesses into their operation.
Our mission is to develop projects that help create and enhance vibrant communities measured not only by their financial success but also by the positive impacts on the broader community,” a Cordish statement read. “This perspective leads to creating opportunities for the community even before our doors open, through job creation, workforce development, local purchasing programs, philanthropy, and vendor opportunities for minority-, women-, and veteran-owned as well as local and small emerging businesses.”
Next week’s casino meet over coffee follows an April vendor fair in which Cordish fielded pitches from hundreds of local businesses and companies as to how, and why, their products and services might be included in the Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia operation.
No comments yet