By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent Media
ROSSFORD – A new $70 million project will provide hotel rooms, conference space, restaurants and shops across from the Hollywood Casino Toledo.
Project RED, for Rossford Entertainment District, was announced this morning inside the casino by officials of NAI Harmon Group. Dallas Paul, the broker for the project, said it will include a 150-room hotel with connecting conference center. A major focus of the 100,000 square feet of retail space will be fine dining and fast casual restaurants with cuisine that complements what is offered across Miami Street in the casino. There will also be some boutique shopping available.
ED Harmon, the company president, said the Toledo-based firm has the global connections to find the right tenants for the development.
The project will take about two and half years to complete, Paul said. The land is currently an open field owned by Hunger Manufacturing.
The first step will be a $1.3 million connector road that will be constructed by the Ohio Department of Transportation. That road has a completion date of spring, 2017.
The project will also have a people mover transit system, which will be called the RED Skyway, to take people between Project RED and the casino.
Paul said when completed the project will employ about 1,000 people in service jobs.
Rossford Mayor Neil MacKinnon said the development furthers Rossford’s evolution into “a new live, work, play community.”
The development that’s so closely linked to the casino, which is in Toledo, only strengthens Rossford’s ties to its neighbor to the north, especially the attractions in Toledo’s downtown, MacKinnon said.
Beth Genson, the director of the Rossford Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Project RED fills a gap in Rossford’s offerings.
Four new hotels have gone up in the Crossroads area to the south of the Rossford downtown, and she’s been trying to attract convention business. But while the beds are available, meeting spaces are not.
Genson said those planning conventions want conference spaces to be just a few steps from the hotel rooms, restaurants, shopping and entertainment.
She said she can’t wait to return to those potential clients and tell them about the new development. The timing is good because conferences are usually planned several years ahead of time.
The completion date of the project will also coincide with the scheduled 2020 completion of the reconstruction of I-75.
