The President Casino Broadwater Resort was a combined

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live entertai ...

and

resort A resort ( North American English) is a self-contained commercial establishment that tries to provide most of a vacationer's wants, such as food, drink, swimming, lodging, sports, entertainment, and shopping, on the premises. The term ''resort ...

that was located in

Biloxi, Mississippi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...

. It was a fixture on the

Mississippi Gulf Coast The Mississippi Gulf Coast, also known as Mississippi Coast, Mississippi Gulf Coast region, Coastal Mississippi, and The Coast, is the area of Mississippi along the Mississippi Sound at the northern extreme of the Gulf of Mexico. Geography At th ...

for over 60 years. Originally known as the Broadwater Beach Hotel and Broadwater Beach Resort, it opened in 1939 as a venue for the illegal but tacitly approved gambling that was flourishing along the coast. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the gambling stopped and the facility was renovated and re-purposed as a resort destination with a state-of-the-art marina and other amenities. In its heyday the Broadwater Beach Resort hosted movie stars, leading politicians, and top business figures as well as people on vacation. It became the Gulf Coast's flagship resort and its colorfully lit front sign was iconic. In 1992, President Casinos gained control of the facility, and after changing the name, added a

riverboat casino A riverboat casino is a type of casino on a riverboat found in several states in the United States with frontage on the Mississippi River and its tributaries, or along the Gulf Coast. Several states authorized this type of casino in order to en ...

and barge. The casino had a successful niche following among lower-end gamblers, but the problems of the parent company resulted in bankruptcy filings in the early 2000s. In 2005, new owners closed the resort and casino shortly before

Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused over 1,800 fatalities and $125 billion in damage in late August 2005, especially in the city of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. It was at the time the cos ...

destroyed them. The property has been empty since then. A plan in 2006–07 to build a new casino and resort there did not materialize. In 2020 a new joint venture involving the

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as just Universal Music) is a Dutch– American multinational music corporation under Dutch law. UMG's corporate headquarters are located in Hilversum, Netherlands and its ...

was formed to build a music-central entertainment and casino resort at the site.

Resort era

The Broadwater Beach Hotel was built in 1938 by investors seeking to gain the business of

gambler Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three elem ...

s coming to casinos along the

. pp. 18, 19. It opened in 1939, and was built in

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style. The first owner was Pete Martin Sr., a well-known gambler and rum runner along the coast. He openly ran a casino within the hotel, as even though it was nominally illegal at the time, gambling was part of the social and economic fabric of Biloxi. After Martin died, openly illegal gambling was frowned upon, and new owners tried to appeal to just the tourist market. In 1958, it was bought by Joe Brown, a

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by b ...

oil millionaire. PresidentCasinoBroadwaterResort2002

Following his death in 1959, his widow Dorothy Brown, who was a noted

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

, renovated the property for a more modern look, including a wide arched canopy in the front. In the early 1960s, the

was emerging as a prime alternative to

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to th ...

as a southern vacation destination, and the Broadwater Beach Resort was considered the pacesetter for the area. In 1963, Dorothy Brown spent $3 million to build a

marina A marina (from Spanish language, Spanish , Portuguese language, Portuguese and Italian language, Italian : ''marina'', "coast" or "shore") is a Dock (maritime), dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina dif ...

and a

heliport A heliport is a small airport suitable for use by helicopters and some other vertical lift aircraft. Designated heliports typically contain one or more touchdown and liftoff areas and may also have limited facilities such as fuel or hangars. I ...

. The Broadwater Resort Marina plan was especially ambitious, involving hosting up to 150 sail and powerboats, and offering shore-to-ship maid service and room service to those docked, all in an effort to capture blue-water game fishing business. When the marina opened in 1965, it was considered state of the art. In 1968, she built the Broadwater Beach Sun Course on land originally owned by

Jefferson Davis Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a ...

, and thus added

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping w ...

as a prime attraction for visitors; by 1974 a Sea Course was also present. During the 1960s, a men's store was present in the hotel. For entertainment, the hotel featured musicians from New Orleans and elsewhere. From the 1950s on, operational control of the hotel and resort rested with Leigh MacConnell, one of the few women to rise to the top of the local hotel industry in that era. In the 1960s the Broadwater Beach Resort found its glory years. Hosting movie stars, leading politicians, and top business figures, as well as people on vacation, it became the Gulf Coast's flagship resort. During this decade, the iconic and colorfully lit Broadwater Beach Resort front sign was added.

Hurricane Camille Hurricane Camille was the second most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the United States, behind the 1935 Labor Day hurricane. The most intense storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season, Camille originated as a tropical depression ...

devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 1969. The resort golf club pro and his wife fought for their lives as the storm wrecked their pro shop apartment. pp. 91, 97, 129–130. The hotel's first floor was carved out by the storm surge, expensive furniture floated out of the lobby, and the marina suffered moderate damage. But the resort rebounded and by 1977 it was described by the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' as a "bustling colony of rooms, cottages, restaurants, golf courses, tennis courts, and its own marina." Conferences were held there, and the Broadwater Beach Hotel was the setting for a fictional regional sales meeting in the 1982 Frederick Barthelme short story "Box Step".

Casino era

Entrepreneur John E. Connelly, founder of President Casinos, then gained control of the property, and the President Casino Broadwater Resort was opened aboard a riverboat docked at the Broadwater Resort Marina in August 1992. It was the second casino to open on the

, following the Isle of Capri Casino which opened two weeks earlier. In June 1995, President Casinos replaced the riverboat with the former Mississippi Gold Shore Casino barge. The table games there were known for having lower limits than most other Biloxi casinos. p. 133. Major country music stars performed there on Wednesday through Saturday nights, and the hotel had 550 rooms available across two structures. In 1997 and 1999, titles to the resort property and barge were formally transferred from Connelly to President Casinos. By the early 2000s, the President Casino Broadwater Resort sat on . The powerboat-oriented Broadwater Resort Marina had 118 berths, and was regarded by one published guide as "one of the best full-service, luxurious marinas between Mobile and New Orleans." The President Broadwater Golf Club offered a full-length 18-hole course. The casino featured over of gambling with over 900

slot machine A slot machine (American English), fruit machine (British English) or poker machine (Australian English and New Zealand English) is a gambling machine that creates a game of chance for its customers. Slot machines are also known pejoratively a ...

s. However, no work had been done on the old resort and its hotel, resulting in its declining in appearance to a run-down state. The hotel capacity was down to 450 rooms and suites, and functioned mainly as a place for the casino barge customers to sleep briefly; furniture was piled up in corridors, the hotel main floor entertainment rooms were empty, and weeds grew on the resort's tennis courts. Nevertheless, the resort still made reference to its pre-casino past, calling itself "one of the last great Southern resorts on the Mississippi Gulf Coast." PresidentCasinoBroadwater

The casino itself found a niche market among local gamblers and was a reliable earner. President Casinos was saddled with corporate debt, however, and a planned new $2 billion resort at the site, to be called Destination Broadwater, never materialized. In April 2001, the President Broadwater Hotel, which represented the non-casino operations, filed for bankruptcy. President Casinos filed for bankruptcy in June 2002, and the Broadwater casino the following month, but operation of the President Casino Broadwater Resort continued.

End

In January 2005, Broadwater Development LLC – a casino holding company owned by two local construction figures, Roy Anderson III and Cotton Fore – won a bankruptcy auction bid for the casino and resort for $82 million, amid speculation that they had overpaid. Anderson said of the barge, "It's a nice structure. But overall aesthetically, it's not going to fit into our master plan." On April 15, 2005, the deal closed; as part of it, the President Casino barge was purchased for $6.8 million by Silver Slipper Casino Venture LLC with the intention of operating it under the name of President Casino until it could be moved to their site in

Hancock County, Mississippi Hancock County is the southernmost county of the U.S. state of Mississippi and is named for Founding Father John Hancock. As of the 2010 census, the population was 43,929. Its county seat is Bay St. Louis. Hancock County is part of the Gulf ...

, where the Silver Slipper operators thought it would fit in. On July 31, 2005, the Broadwater Beach Resort closed its doors, with Broadwater Development announcing plans to tear it down and build a new resort and casino. PresidentCasinoBargeAfterKatrina

Less than a month later, on August 29, 2005,

tore the casino barge from its moorings and washed it ashore ½ mile west of the Broadwater Resort Marina. The barge was a total loss, it was cut up as scrap and removed by a salvage company. (After the state passed legislation allowing

s to build on solid ground with a traditional foundation as long as they were near navigable waterways, the new Silver Slipper Casino would be built from the ground up instead and open in late 2006.) The hotel in the resort part was still standing but heavily damaged by Katrina, with the storm surge reaching the second floor. The famed sign was destroyed. The marina too was wrecked and closed. The golf course did not reopen. The hotel subsequently underwent demolition, which concluded by November 2006 with even the foundation slabs removed.

Proposals for property

Once the post-Katrina building boom began, the Broadwater site increased in value and several other casino operations indicated an interest in it. In March 2006, Broadwater Development LLC gained city approval for creating The Broadwater resort, a $1 billion plan that would feature two casinos, 3,375 condo units, 1,900 hotel rooms, an 18-hole golf course, large amounts of retail entertainment space and convention space, and a marina again. By September 2007, the Broadwater developers said they were close to signing with an international entertainment corporation to begin the work, and the Biloxi Planning Commission granted them an 18-month extension. But by October 2008, the

global financial crisis Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to: Entertainment * ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003 * ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007 * ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989 * ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015 * Bruno ...

had prevented anything from happening, and the Mississippi Gaming Commission gave an indefinite extension to the Broadwater site approval. In the event, nothing happened, and by 2017 the site and the marina had been, as the local newspaper stated, "Lifeless for more than 11 years". One of the Broadwater Development LLC owners said they had seen some interest in the property, but no realistic offers. In October 2020, a new joint venture between the

and Dakia U-Ventures was formed to create music-themed entertainment luxury resorts. One of the first resorts was planned to be at this Biloxi site; under the name UMusic Broadwater Hotel, the property would be transformed into a $1.2 billion destination, with an expansive live music venue, casino, and a large resort hotel.

References

External links

Website for planned The Broadwater resort
{{good article Hotel buildings completed in 1938 Defunct casinos in the United States Demolished hotels in the United States Casinos completed in 1938 Hotels established in 1939 Casinos in Mississippi Resorts in Mississippi 1939 establishments in Mississippi Hotels disestablished in 2005 2005 disestablishments in Mississippi Buildings and structures demolished in 2006 Demolished buildings and structures in Mississippi