Tiverton won a lottery in 2018 when, after the closure of the Newport Grand slot parlor in Newport, the town became one of only two municipalities in Rhode Island to host a casino.
The $140 million Bally’s Tiverton Casino & Hotel opened with great fanfare on a 21-acre parcel near Route 24 at the Massachusetts border. It held the promise of generating jobs and a steady stream of revenue for the town and the state.
But one source of those jobs and revenue has failed to pay off: the hotel.
The 88-room hotel attached to the casino closed abruptly during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and five years later remains shuttered with no signs of a reopening on the horizon.
Even the casino hotel operator, Providence-based Bally’s Corp., hasn’t been able to provide clear answers on when guests will be able to return.
It’s not for a lack of asking on the part of Rep. John G. Edwards, D-Tiverton, who says he’s been trying to get to the bottom of the nagging mystery of why the hotel continues to be dormant and not bringing in sales and hotel taxes for the state and the town.
As chair of the Permanent Joint Committee on State Lottery, Edwards frequently questions Bally’s executives about it at monthly meetings. In fact, Craig Sculos, Bally’s general manager at the Tiverton property, joked at a recent meeting that he wished he could place a bet on whether the hotel questions were coming.
At the joint committee’s meeting in November, Sculos told committee members that Bally’s had been seeking to hire a management firm to operate the hotel, but a deal with a national operator fell through last May.
Now Bally’s has relaunched an analysis of regional hotel industry data “to see if we can make a go of this,” Sculos said.
Indeed, as late as October 2024, Bally’s leaders were calling the hotel’s closure “temporary.” And they have consistently said the hotel’s closing has had no material impact on revenues.
In a follow-up statement in January, Bally’s spokesperson Patti Doyle said “the company is evaluating plans for a potential hotel opening.”
Still, Edwards told Providence Business News recently that he and his constituents remain in the dark. And he’s not convinced that Bally’s is telling the whole story when it blames the closed hotel on issues with hiring and maintaining staff and finding a third-party operator.
“I don’t buy it,” he said.
Edwards notes that there are other successful hotels in the area. Tiverton is between the popular destination of Aquidneck Island to its south and Providence to its north. And the casino sits directly on the border with Massachusetts with easy access to Route 24.
In fact, other developers may be looking to construct hotels in town, including James Long, owner of Tiverton Recreation LLC, which operates the Longplex Family & Sports Center about 1½ miles from the casino hotel. Long is looking to buy property in the area to expand his business and build a hotel.
Hotel room rentals are a source of revenue for both state and local municipalities. The state collects a 7% sales tax and a 5% hotel tax on room rental fees. Also, cities and towns collect a 1% hotel tax on those fees charged in their municipalities.
State records show that revenue wasn’t exactly flowing in from the casino hotel – the only hotel in town – before its closure. In fiscal 2019, which included a time period before the casino opened, the town collected $9,365 in hotel tax. In fiscal 2020, which included a time period after the hotel closed, the town collected $11,909 from the hotel tax.
It was not immediately clear how many people worked at the hotel before it closed.
Kirby Payne, founder and president of Tiverton-based HVS Hotel Management, says it’s likely Bally’s hasn’t reopened the hotel because the interest among potential operators might be extremely low, in part because the hotel’s design is plain, unlike the lavish accommodations at other casinos.
And while its attachment to a casino may create some demand for room rentals, that connection also brings with it some security concerns that other hotels might not have to contend with, according to Payne.
“I think the answer is they can’t find anybody else to take on the risk, which you are never going to eliminate,” said Payne, a former chairman of the American Hotel & Lodging Association.
There may also be some tax benefits, Payne says.
Indeed, before Bally’s entered a leaseback deal with Gaming and Leisure Properties Inc. in 2023, it had its property tax assessment lowered $4 million, according to town records, in part because the company cited the hotel’s closure.
“If you have less profit, your tax basis is lower,” Payne said.
Meanwhile, Long, now Tiverton’s highest taxpayer, is forging ahead with his plans for a hotel and a hockey rink, and he says his prospects have improved now that several Town Council members who he felt opposed his plans have left the council and former Town Administrator Christopher Cotta resigned in October.
“If the ice hockey rink goes up, I could sell three or four hotels,” Long said. “And now pretty much all the people I had issues with are gone. I look forward to working with the new administration.”
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