In Ohio, players at the Jack Cleveland Casino may soon find it easier to access the downtown venue after operator Jack Entertainment reportedly spent an unspecified amount in order to purchase a 670-space parking garage located just across the street.
According to a report from The Plain Dealer newspaper, Jack Entertainment bought the ten-story building on the corner of Ontario Street and Prospect Avenue East from Rainbow Garage, which is controlled by Florida investor Robert Danial, and now plans to renovate the aging facility over the coming 18 months.
Detroit-based Jack Entertainment, which is also responsible for the Jack Thistledown Racino in the nearby village of North Randall as well as the state’s Jack Cincinnati Casino, reportedly revealed that it decided to purchase the garage due to the fact that players visiting its Cleveland venue often encounter difficulties in finding a place to park their cars. It purportedly explained that this lack of space is especially evident when the 20,000-seat Quicken Loans Arena is hosting basketball games or when the Cleveland Indians baseball team is playing at nearby Progressive Field.
“We need the additional capacity when demand downtown is high,” Mark Tricano, Regional Operations Senior Vice-President for Jack Entertainment, reportedly told The Plain Dealer.
The newspaper reported that the ground floor of the parking garage was once home to the May Company department store and includes 14,500 sq ft of retail space currently occupied by a selection of food and drinking establishments along with the Cuyahoga Community College Hospitality Management Center. This space as well as an adjacent eight-story office building was purportedly purchased for $11.6 million by Haddas Windowpane in August and could soon be redeveloped to feature new retail and residential offerings.
Tricano reportedly told The Plain Dealer that the purchase of the parking garage will allow Jack Cleveland Casino to expand its ‘entertainment and hospitality amenities’ while providing patrons with parking that is ‘immediately adjacent to the casino’.
However, he reportedly declined to comment on whether Jack Entertainment had any plans to connect its latest purchase to the casino building via an overhead walkway, as is the case with an existing 1,200-space parking garage located further along Ontario Street.
“We really need to understand and put our plans in place and evaluate it,” Tricano reportedly told The Plain Dealer.
Tricano reportedly told the newspaper that the ‘family of companies’ behind Jack Entertainment, which additionally operates the 30-story Greektown Casino Hotel 7BALL in Detroit, currently owns ‘more than 5.5 million sq ft of real estate’ in the Cleveland area including Jack Cleveland Casino with its a 96,000 sq ft gaming floor offering 1,600 slots as well as a 30-table poker room.
