Casino at Dania Beach gets $60m "Vegas-Style" Makeover

The Casino at Dania Beach (Dania Jai Alai) has been closed for over a year due to renovations. Now, after a $60 million makeover, this Miami casino is ready to open bigger and better than before.

“It looks like a true Las Vegas-style casino,” said Marco Salvino, Mayor of Dania Beach. “It will draw people from all over and bring more people to our city. We want people to come here to gamble and enjoy the new casino and maybe check out some of the new restaurants.”

Once sporting an old jai alai court and 5,000-seat stadium, the Casino at Dania Beach replaced the sports complex with 880 slot machines, 21 poker tables, an electronic gaming room, sports bars and restaurants.

“We brought Dania Jai Alai into the 21st century,” said Scott Savin, the CEO of Dania Entertainment Center. “Our competitors want you to come in and gamble. We try to emphasize entertainment over gambling. Our casinos are about the concerts, the comedians, the shows. We want you to come in and have a drink, listen to music, take in a show, watch jai alai.”

As the Sun Sentinel reports, the casino is still keeping its jai alai area alive with a new court and 500-seat stadium, complete with a large video screen for viewing the matches. This is far less space than the 5,000-seat arena took up, however, it accurately reflects where the sport is today.

“We are reinventing and rebranding jai alai,” said Savin. “We’re trying to revive what some people think is a dead sport. But we’ve been getting tons of calls about jai alai.”

The overall idea behind the renovations is to bring a Vegas experience to the South Beach area. And with a Las Vegas-style buffet, slots featuring the likes of Britney Spears, concerts and more, it seems like the Casino at Dania Beach is coming closer to accomplishing this goal.

“(Seminole) Hard Rock is the 800-million-pound gorilla,” Savin explained. “They probably don’t consider us a competitor. But I think we’ll get some of their customers, the people who live east. We’re smaller and more personal. We’re going to be a good local casino.”

The Dania Casino is currently in a soft-launch phase, with a couple hundred people recently stopping by to see how the resort looks. The casino will officially open on February 26 with a brand-new look and design.