Casinos need to offer an experience, architect tells Indian gaming conference

April 23, 2018 4:01 AM
  • Mark Gruetze, CDC Gaming Reports
April 23, 2018 4:01 AM
  • Mark Gruetze, CDC Gaming Reports

Amid a spending boom intended to attract and keep customers, casinos need to think harder about how to improve their appeal to non-gamblers, says architect and designer Bob Gdowski.

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“You’re selling your brand and your experience to a much broader group of people,” said Gdowski, design principal and managing director of JCJ Architecture, a Connecticut-based firm that this year opened a Las Vegas office. “That forces you to think about the spatial experience in much more of a sophisticated way.”

That includes introducing natural light to what traditionally has been a “dark box” of slot machines and table games and “blurring the line” between a building’s interior and exterior.

JCJ, founded in 1936, has nine offices spread across the United States and focuses on two broad areas: hospitality, including casinos, and institutional, including schools and other government buildings. It has about 120 employee-owners.

“We’re not an architecture firm that does interior on the side; we’re not an interior firm that does architecture on the side,” Gdowski said during an interview at the National Indian Gaming Association trade show in Las Vegas. “We’re an architecture and interior design firm equally,”

Because non-gaming casino revenue in Las Vegas outstrips gaming revenue, resorts must offer different types of experience to a broad range of people, he said.

For example, casinos are moving away from designs that force people into the gaming area.

“There’s enough gamblers where we don’t need to be trying to force people on impulse buys,” he said.

JCJ designed Resorts World Casino in the Catskills, which opened in March 2018, and has worked on casino projects with more than 60 Native American tribes.

Tribal projects, as well as those involving governmental boards and commissions, require consensus building. That approach of getting everyone to buy in to a building concept is inherent in JCJ’s history as an institutional side, Gdowski said

“A huge differentiator for us is our ability to build that consensus within a room,” he said.

“The more decisions you make up front, the less costly it is.”

That approach applies over the lifespan of the property, as well. Flexibility is essential in new construction to allow casinos to respond to changing customers’ changing tastes, such as the growing popularity of stadium gaming.

“People get tired quickly, through no fault of the operators,” Gdowski said. “It’s a product of market, a product of trending, and a product of keeping fresh with such a critical mass of competition.”

“We want people to feel comfortable, engaged and welcome.”