Casino names manager – Cincinnati.com
Veteran gambling industry executive Kevin Kline will be named general manager for Cincinnati?s future casino complex. He will play a significant role in the development of the $400 million project, then assume oversight of day-to-day operations once it opens in late 2012.
The appointment was confirmed by developer Rock Gaming and Caesars Entertainment on Thursday evening.
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Kline, 42, is coming to Cincinnati from suburban Chicago, where he was the second-in-command of the Horseshoe Casino Hammond, the most lucrative casino in the $2 billion Chicago metropolitan market, which reaches into Indiana.
Word of the appointment comes as Rock Gaming and Caesars announced that the Cincinnati casino?s sister property would become the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland.
Officials with both companies refused to release the brand planned for Broadway Commons.
As the assistant general manager in Hammond, Kline was heavily involved in major upgrades to the casino. Before his tenure there, he also helped run a Harrah?s ? also a possible concept for Cincinnati. From 2002 to 2005, Kline helped turn around the troubled Harrah?s casino in New Orleans as its director of marketing.
Rock Gaming and Caesars Entertainment will be here Friday for a groundbreaking ceremony at Broadway and Court streets. The brand announcement in Cleveland prompted some analysts to speculate the local casino will acquire the same name.
Mark Nichols, an economist with the University of Nevada at Reno, said branding both Rock Gaming casinos as Horseshoe casinos would make sense. He said it would make the casino easier to market, as well as establish a strong presence to counter Penn National Gaming Inc.?s future casinos.
Those casinos will be branded as Hollywood casinos, the same as the region?s dominant casino in Lawrenceburg.
Caesars has several branded casino concepts, but in markets outside Las Vegas and Atlantic City has emphasized the Horseshoe and Harrah?s brands for its regional casinos. Harrah?s is marketed as more of an overall gambling, dining and entertainment concept. The Horseshoe concept is considered a little higher-end and marketed toward more serious gamblers, with higher betting limits.
