Today's Guest: Ron Olson of Turtle Creek Casino in Williamsburg, Michigan
Today's Host: John Bentley
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Ron Olson Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Turtle Creek Hotel & Casino's Radio Spotlight brought to you by Turtle Creek Hotel & Casino. Visit them on the web at www.turtlecreekcasino.com. Turtle Creek Hotel & Casino - always a good time! We now join host, John Bentley, with this year's introductory of the grand opening of the Turtle Creek Hotel & Casino.
JOHN: Today on the program we have the CEO of Economic Development for Turtle Creek Hotel & Casino, Ron Olson. Welcome to the program, Ron.
RON: Hi. How are you today?
JOHN: Oh, just fine. We appreciate you joining us today in your busy schedule. We want to talk about the new Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel. Let's talk about some of the new, unique features of this project.
RON: Well, you know, it's a property that's been in the making now for almost two years when we started this whole property, and when we came up with the initial design of it which is unique in itself, we certainly looked at our competition, drove a lot of our design features that we've incorporated into the new property, and we wanted a property that was ultra modern, have a unique look to it. As you know, we own the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa, and looking at that building itself, it's certainly been timeless in it's look in the fact that it's an all glass structure, 18 stories high, and it's just one of those unique buildings that is unique to the Grand Traverse area. So when we started that project that certainly was one of our thoughts that we had was that we wanted a property that would stand with the Resort, but yet stand differently from our competition.
JOHN: Now that hotel, how many rooms, what's the capacity of that hotel?
RON: Well looking at it, we designed the property as 137 rooms right now, and certainly we designed a second wing to it that if we decide to move forward in the future, we could actually add a second wing to it.
JOHN: Ok, now I understand that you guys have quite a unique system of air flow through the casino itself. Tell us a little bit about that.
RON: Well, you know, looking and being in the casino business as long as I have and doing enough surveys with customers, we know based upon even our comment cards that we've taken in over the last several years that it's always a concern of customers about the air quality. So what we ended up doing knowing that that was really always a concern with our guests that we wanted to design the property to address those issues. So when we designed the building, we designed it with that in mind. We knew we had to have high ceilings for air to move up much quickly, and then what we ended up doing because we had the high ceilings and we ran into a problem of, you know, if we have ventilation or if we have our heating and air conditioning coming down from the ceiling, how do we actually get it down through the floor where people are comfortable. So we actually in addressing one problem, created another problem at that time. So our architects really thought about the whole situation and came up with a great solution. They just said, let's push the fresh air from the bottom and suck it out through the top and it should work very well. And actually it's been a great feature for the property. A lot of people who have visited the property lately have commented numerous times that I don't smell the smoke that I typically have smelled in the past or even with your competitors I don't smell the smoke as badly. And I think all properties or gaming properties are very aware of the smoke issue and the quality of the air. A lot of our patrons are very conscious of that so the design that we actually came up with was to come up with a raised floor. The floor actually is built up over the main floor about two feet and at that point we have a lot of our ducting coming across the floor along with a lot of our electrical and cabling. So really it gives us a lot of flexibility to move those ducks around. It gives us a lot of flexibility to move the machines around with little or no cost to it. So we're pretty excited about the whole concept of it.
JOHN: Sounds like a great idea. Let's talk a little bit about the jobs that were created locally by this new casino and hotel opening up.
RON: You know, we didn't create a lot of new jobs, you know, initially. I guess I should probably re-phrase that. Certainly when we started construction of this Tribal Counsel was very concerned about trying to employ as many companies and people locally so I guess in one sense that when we construct it, you know, a lot of our construction workers were local workers. A lot of the companies were local. Probably about 80% - 85% of the total project was done locally in the state. A lot of the workers were local and some of the workers actually did come from down state, but they were from Michigan, and that was something that we strived for. When we were interviewing companies, you know, certainly we wanted the best companies we could get, but we also recognized that if they were a local company, certainly we were going to give them some special consideration when choosing which companies we were to work with. Now as far as once we've got it completed, we didn't hire a lot of employees, because what happened is a lot of our machines went from coinless to ticket in/ticket out. The floor was designed so we could actually get a little of labor savings through the design. So we didn't see, even though we've got a huge gaming floor in comparison to what we had, we really didn't see the need to add a lot of additional people that actually work the floor, because we picked up some efficiencies through the design of the property. But where we did hire additional bodies or people were on the hotel side. Certainly that was a whole new part of the business that we had not addressed before with the older operation. We had to go through and hire a whole management staff for the hotel as well as a maintenance staff and certainly if you were to visit the property, you'll notice that the landscaping has been nicely done. We actually had to hire a number of outside maintenance people as well as housekeeping staff, because our building size has gone from 85,000 sq ft to almost 360,000 sq ft of building. So you can kind of figure that we've got a lot more to clean and take care of in the newer building. If we were to look at the new jobs that we've created, certainly with the housekeeping, maintenance, and the hotel side of it.
JOHN: Sure. Ok, Ron, we're going to take a break here for a couple of minutes, but before we do that, could you name off maybe a couple of the local businesses that you were able to employ on this project?
RON: Let's see, Sportsview was from down state. The main contractor was out of Minneapolis, PCL, and the architect was Wallace Bishop out of Minneapolis. With the exception of those two companies, pretty much of it was done locally, but they were all sub-contracted through PCL so I may not have all of the names. ABI who was the heating and cooling contractor which was local. Bahma which is locally here in Traverse City. Interface is where we got a lot of the FF&E out of. So, yeah, I could probably name Interface, Bahma, and ABI for an example.
JOHN: We're going to take a little break. We're speaking with Ron Olson, he is CEO of Economic Development for the Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel. We'll be right back after these important messages. Stay tuned.
ANNOUNCER: You're going to feel good tonight at Traverse City's new place to play. Introducing the all new Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel. You'll always find the hottest slots and heart pounding table games straight out of Vegas. And our new expansive casino has more of the games you love like the ultimate excitement of our new poker room. Let the good times roll at Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel. You can stay and play at our new hotel that gives you easy access to all the action like at the Level 3 Lounge where the night life never stops. It's all new and always exciting. From Traverse City it's an easy drive east on M-72. Call (800) 922-2WIN or go to www.turtlecreekcasino.com. Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel always a good time. Must be 18 or older to enter. Owned by the Grand Traverse Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians.
JOHN: We are back with the CEO of of Economic Development for the new Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel, Ron Olson. Welcome back to the program, Ron.
RON: Thanks for having me again.
JOHN: Now we've been talking about a great new project that you guys have developed and built in the Williamsburg area. Let's talk about some of the other facilities that you guys own or manage at this point in time. Can we talk a little bit about the GT Resort and Spa. What is the future for the Resort?
RON: Well I think over the last couple of years since the tribe has actually taken ownership of the property, we've spent probably $12 - $15 million in renovation. The only really new thing that we've come online with this year is we actually added what we call doggy day care. Actually we are going in a new direction for guests that's got an animal that they would like to bring with alot of the resorts or a lot of the hotels don't cater to the animals, and we've actually took one of our houses on property and actually converted it to a kennel so that seems to be some of the things that we're working with at the resort., but in this economy, I really don't see us moving too quickly in any direction with the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa at this time. Just because of the economy. We are certainly experiencing a slow down, because a lot of our business revolves around the car industry. A lot of our conferences were tied to the automotive industries so we're having to regroup a little bit, restructure and actually try to open up some new markets for some of our meetings space.
JOHN: Now you guys also have a new project up in Peshawbestown Sand's Casino; a marina that you guys are going to be developing. Isn't that true?
RON: Yeah, we are moving forward with the marina. We were working at this time with the Corp of Engineers and DEQ. We're working with those two bodies and currently we're going through the hole approval process and currently we've received tentative approval from the DEQ and currently we're waiting for final approval from the Corp of Engineers. So once we get that approval, and then we can kind of start to move into construction documents and then actually get into the finance of it. So, you know, we've got a little ways to go yet, but certainly we're excited about the possibility of being able to build this marina, because we really feel that it's something that the area needs. There seems to be a demand for additional boat slips, and we feel that it certainly would be an added plus for the survival of the Leelanau Sands Casino.
JOHN: Sure, speaking of the Sands is there anything else going on there that you want to mention?
RON: No. You know, at this point, basically we're kind of waiting to see how the Turtle Creek does. We know that we've got the marina project that we're working on; so at this point, there's really not too much slated for the Sands at this point.
JOHN: Yeah. Ok. Now you guys recently took over management of Lochen Heath Golf Course.
RON: Yeah, it was somewhat of a gentlemen's agreement. They certainly ran into some financial difficulty, and the Lochen Heath management people had asked us if we would consider taking over the golf course, not only for their memberships, but certainly for the benefit of our members also. So it was a gentlemen's agreement that will last a period of about 1 year, and at that time, we will evaluate the relationship to determine if we take it any further.
JOHN: Now, the Lochen Heath is by the Grand Traverse Resort, right?
RON: Correct. It's basically just located across the road from us. It's probably located maybe a mile down from our main entrance so it makes it very easy for our maintenance people, our management staff, our guests to actually get there. It works out really well for us.
JOHN: Something else that the Turtle Creek Casino is doing is you are contributing locally to the community. Can you tell us a little bit about maybe some of the projects or what you're doing in that regard?
RON: You mean as far as the local community. Certainly through our 2% grant applications that we pay out twice a year. We contribute 2% of our net win or 2% of our net win in the form of taxation, and so twice a year Tribal Counsel will sit down and review applications and award this money to various groups, non-profit government entities, and there's just a whole list of people that are looking for some assistance throughout the year. Probably so much that I would be hard pressed to just start even begin mentioning them.
JOHN: I do want to add in, though, that I know you guys did contribute $10,000 to the Traverse City West Fields which is a pretty nice donation, and Lord knows they can use that too.
RON: Oh yeah, I mean, if you wanted to talk about actually some of the people that we do donate to it's Women's Resource Center, a lot of the children's programs, we'll donate to school programs. I mean, there are so many of them.
JOHN: Well, Ron, I think that's going to do it for our time today. We certainly appreciate you joining us on the program.
RON: Thank you very much.
JOHN: We've been speaking with the CEO of Economic Development for the new Turtle Creek Casino & Hotel, Ron Olson. I am your host, John Bentley, thanks for tuning in everyone. Have a great afternoon.
ANNOUNCER: Every town's got a place where friends meet up with friends and folks call you by your name. A place to check your cares and share a laugh, maybe even fill your pockets up. That's what Leelanau Sands is all about. The food is hot, the service is warm, and the games are down right friendly. So just come as you are, we'll save a spot for you. Leelanau Sands Casino.
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