A planned mini-casino which will fill a vacant mall space near Pittsburgh by the end of the year has a leader: Sean Sullivan, a 40-year veteran of the gaming industry.
Sullivan is the newly-named general manager for Live! Casino in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, which should open in late 2020. The property is part of the Cordish Company, which is also developing a full-size Live! casino in South Philadelphia, adjacent to the city’s sports stadiums.
The satellite casino is a $150 million, 100,000-square-foot gaming, dining and entertainment destination, and part of the Westmoreland Mall.
New Live! mini-casino GM brings extensive experience
Sullivan will oversee development, opening, and oversight of the management and operations of the first Live! gaming facility in PA.
He has held leadership positions with gaming companies in a variety of jurisdictions, including Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, and Colorado.
Before joining Live!, Sullivan served as general manager at Treasure Island Resort & Casino in Red Wing, Minnesota, and vice president of special projects at Pinnacle Entertainment in Las Vegas.
He also spent nearly a decade as vice president and general manager of Meadows Racetrack & Casino in Washington, PA, just 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.
The first location for Cordish in PA
Sullivan’s extensive experience in the gaming and hospitality sector and knowledge of the Western PA market is expected to lead the Live! brand towards significant growth in a new gambling jurisdiction for the Cordish Gaming Group.
Rob Norton, President of Cordish Gaming Group, explained:
“As Cordish Gaming Group proudly expands into new jurisdictions, we have made it a priority to hire experts of the highest caliber in the industry to lead our new Live! developments and we have certainly found that with the appointment of Mr. Sullivan. We are confident the new Live! Casino will become the premier gaming and entertainment destination in the Pittsburgh market and deliver the same excellent customer service that guests have come to expect at all our Live! locations.”
The Live! project should generate $188 million in annual economic impact.
An additional $148 million in economic impact should come from construction, including approximately 960 direct and indirect construction jobs.
The project should also provide approximately 500 permanent new jobs.
Mini-casinos will account for at best four new facilities
The Live! mini-casino is in Hempfield Township, about 30 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. It is one of two planned mini-casinos in a rehabbed retail space. The other is a mall rehab in York County in the South Central PA.
The facility should feature 750 slots and about 30 table games, plus dining and entertainment venues, including Sports & Social Steel City, a unique sports restaurant and lounge.
In addition to the two mall rehab mini-casino locations, a third satellite casino is under construction in Morgantown.
While Cordish controls the western Live! location, both of the other two mini-casino sites are part of Penn National Gaming.
A fourth potential mini-casino in Shippensburg remains in limbo, and the fifth proposed location in Big Beaver is dead in the water after failing to attract enough financing.
PA had authorized as many as ten satellite casinos, but the market turned cold, and bidding for new licenses stopped last year.
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