ISC to make another run at Kansas City Casino
The company, whose stock price has dropped 50 percent in the past year, closing Tuesday at $21.72 a share, is expected to make a second run next week at a new revenue source: casino gambling.
An ISC spokesman said the company would submit a bid to the state of Kansas by April 1 to develop a casino-hotel and a dining-retail-entertainment complex next to its speedway in Kansas City.
It's part of a larger strategy to "unlock the value on the balance of land we have," spokesman Charles Talbert said. ISC, which owns or operates 13 racetracks, owns or leases a combined 13,000 acres.
That strategy has already been slowed by several unexpected pit stops, however, as slumping real-estate values and a general malaise in the construction business have contributed to the company's financial funk.
In Kansas, ISC withdrew in December its first bid to build a Hard Rock Hotel & Casino with partner Cordish Co. because of "uncertainty in the global financial markets and the expected inability to debt finance the full project at reasonable rates," according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Kansas reopened the bidding process earlier this year for the casino-management contract, and ISC plans to submit a new proposal, this time with a phased approach for the other components. The original proposal called for a single-phase, $705 million complex, with 3,000 slot machines and 140 gaming tables in the casino; 275,000 square feet of entertainment space, including a live-music venue; and a convention center.
Gambling could give the company's bottom line a much-needed boost, after a series of expensive missteps in recent years. More at Orlando Sentinel