Petersburg's $1.4B Live! casino tops out, aims for late 2027
Crews placed the final structural beam on the Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia on Oct. 8, keeping the $1.4 billion resort on track to open by the end of 2027.
Construction crews placed the final structural beam on the hotel at Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia in Petersburg on Thursday, Oct. 8, a milestone known as a topping-out. The $1.4 billion resort is going up at 301 Wagner Road along Interstate 95, and the developers say it is on track to open by the end of 2027.
The project is a partnership of Baltimore-based Cordish Cos. and Virginia Beach-based Bruce Smith Enterprise. AnderCorp and Davis Brothers Construction Co. are the contractors. Gaming and Leisure Properties bought the nearly 100-acre site earlier this year for about $27 million, according to property records cited by Richmond BizSense, and will lease it back to the operators.
When finished, the complex will cover nearly 500,000 square feet. Plans call for a 200-room hotel with 25 suites, 1,600 slot machines, a 22-table poker room, a sportsbook, more than 70,000 square feet of meeting and convention space and a 3,200-seat entertainment venue. Nearly 20 restaurants and bars are planned; the first three named are The Prime Rib, Sports & Social and Luk Fu, a Pan-Asian restaurant with chef Jet Tila.
A 75,000-square-foot temporary casino opened next to the site in January with roughly 900 slot machines, 30 table games and about 600 employees. It will be torn down once the permanent resort opens, and its workers will be able to move to the new building.
The developers project 6,100 construction jobs, 1,400 permanent jobs and $240 million in tax revenue for the city over the first decade. Petersburg voters approved the casino in a 2024 referendum. It is one of several Virginia casino projects under construction, along with the Norfolk resort set to open in late 2027.
Petersburg is counting on the casino for jobs and tax revenue, and the topping-out means the $1.4 billion resort's structure is done with about a year of work left before opening.
What's next
- Late 2027 Permanent casino, hotel and entertainment venue expected to open