A funny thing happened at Southland Casino Hotel, starting mid-afternoon on Tuesday, Dec. 27.

Car-by-car, University of Arkansas and University of Kansas football fans streaming down interstate highways to get to the AutoZone Liberty Bowl in Memphis were getting word that their hotels did not have water.

On social media, that news traveled faster than either of the teams’ running backs. 

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At the gleaming-new, 300-room hotel in West Memphis, which had water, occupancy went from 55% to well over 95% in two hours, a staggering surge in demand.

“I’ve been in the business 35 years. I’ve never seen a turn on rooms like that,” said Shawn Matthews, Southland’s director of hotels. “We were not prepared but we will be the next time.”

Southland, which over three years poured $320 million into building a 20-story hotel and an additional 96,000 square feet of Las Vegas-strip casino ambience, is now betting on the back-to-back exposure of a bowl game and New Year’s Eve (with some rooms are going for $700 a night) to cement its new image in the regional consciousness.

And it won’t be the first time Southland has profited on coincidence. In 2011, when the flooded Mississippi River closed Tunica’s nine casinos, Southland saw its opening and quickly moved to a 24/7 operation and never looked back.

“We started as a very hyperlocal facility. Most of our guests came from within 15 miles,” said Osi Imomoh, the Southland’s president and general manager. “But our goal now is attracting people within a four-hour drive of the Mid-South. … Memphis has so much to offer. And this area has so much history to offer. We’re part of that fabric.”

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Since 1956, when Southland Greyhound Park opened, it has been the across-the-river escape for thousands of betting Memphians, who later added all-you-eat crab legs and slot machines to their list of wants.

The greyhounds ran their last races on Saturday, Dec. 31, the culmination of a three-year phaseout that started in 2019; it was prompted partially by polls that showed Arkansas voters would ban dog racing if the state’s last remaining track did not bow out gracefully.

At the same time, Southland — headed by billionaire and Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs — doubled down on its investment in West Memphis, aiming for an out-sized piece of the region’s entertainment dollar with the brand it has been expanding since 2006, shortly after Arkansas lawmakers approved certain forms of gaming.

Now, with a luxury hotel tower, eight new restaurants, including the premier steakhouse Ignite, and one of the largest gaming floors in the country (2,400 slot machines), Southland is billing itself as a hometown brand with an epic makeover.

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“It’s all here, and it’s not something that you envision in the Mid-South. Most of our guests think they are on the Vegas strip,” Imomoh said as he walked across the massive new casino floor (two and a half football fields long) of whirling slots and interactive gaming tables.

Interspersed throughout are cozy, quiet bars and a range of restaurants. One, The Kitchens, offers a 400-foot buffet with fare, including crab legs, prepared in seven glassed-in kitchens for theatrics separate from the stimulation on the gaming floor.

The betting public (Southland has a monthly mailing list of more than 70,000 people) receive a players card when they enter. Through in-house IT functions, the card keeps up with the gamblers’ activity, comping them rooms and meals as they play.

“You may get a free buffet. You may get a free steak dinner. You may get $25 food credit,” said Neki Catron, community engagement manager. “The card keeps up with you all day.”

In January, Delaware North, Southland’s parent company, will roll out a new rewards program, allowing customers to use points across hundreds of its venues.

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“If you earn points here, and you want to travel to Yellowstone, or whatever it is, we have those experiences as part of our player catalog,” Imomoh said.

Past is prologue

Since 1976, Southland has been owned by Delaware North, the hospitality company that Jacobs’ father and uncles started in 1915, initially as a theater concessionaire. The business quickly grew to include ballparks.

Today, the privately owned company has operations on four continents and serves half a billion people a year in airports, parks and cultural attractions. It owns TD Garden in Boston. Its park and resort business includes lodging, food and beverage, and retail services in places such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon national parks.

Delaware also specializes in regional gaming venues and has other properties in New York and West Virginia as well as partnerships in others in Florida and Ohio.

Its most lucrative operation is Southland, where Delaware North got its start as the concessionaire way back at the beginning of the run.

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In 1976, Delaware bought the nearly 200-acre dog park on Ingram Boulevard off I-40 and over time built up the races to thousands a year.

Size and scope 

Southland employs more than 1,400 staffers, from people who clean hotel rooms to high-end chefs, plus hundreds of others in food service or working at the casino’s 50 electronic gaming tables: craps, roulette and blackjack.

Employees who earn tips start at $10 an hour. Non-tipped workers start at $15.

“When other places have struggled, we have been able to bring people on board,” Imomoh said. “We’re competitive. We’re very quick to adjust rates.”

On most Saturdays, Southland has 10,000 to 12,000 guests. It has the capacity to serve 4,200 meals a day, including to employees, who receive a complimentary meal.

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Southland’s kitchens will serve as a corporate training ground for Delaware’s chefs, who are expected to earn industry certification to work in its culinary leadership roles.

Workers come from across a 150-mile radius that extends as far north as Blytheville and into West Tennessee and North Mississippi.

To keep them, Delaware has an intensive paid training program, including an eight-week table-dealing course.

“If you pass the class, you’ll be hired as a full-time dealer. That’s how dedicated we are to putting the best foot forward,” Imomah said.

Community player

Community engagement manager Catron’s job is to entwine Southland in the fabric of the area, directing its philanthropy to unmet needs and involving small business owners, including farmers, in its purchasing.

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“We purchase several hundred thousand pounds of catfish a year from a fish farming community in Mississippi,” she said. “A really big part of my job is working with the community to identify local businesses, including minority-owned companies, that we can truly elevate and help uplift their operational value.”

For instance, Southland’s managers learned that Crittenden County did not have an OB-GYN.

The thinking was always that Memphis, with its many doctors, is so close, Catron said.

“But, when you have state-funded insurance, you can’t go to another state. So, you had ladies and women that had to go to Jonesboro, which is 66 miles away, and Forrest City, which is 32 miles away, for basic prenatal care.”

A year ago, Southland gave $275,000 toward a county clinic with a nurse practitioner who can perform prenatal care.

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The casino also gave $325,000 to the Mid-South Food Bank to fund 25 mobile food pantries across the county.

Betting on sports

Right now, more than 85% of Southland’s revenue comes from slot machines, with a slim 2% to 3% from sports bookings.

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But Southland is out to build that sector, which is run by apps the casinos develop for voters in various states. 

“It means trying to convert players, who might play on other apps, to use our app,” Imomoh said.

The new year will be pivotal because for the first time Arkansas residents will be to access mobile betting for the Super Bowl and March Madness. 

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Sports betting has been legal in Arkansas since November 2018, when state voters approved an amendment to the constitution to allow casinos. Tennessee legalized sports and mobile betting in 2019.

In Arkansas alone, nearly $160 million in sports bets have been placed since November.

“Sports wagering is a very competitive market,” Imomoh said. “People bet where they’re most comfortable, and we hope they’re most comfortable with us.”

Legislation drives growth

Arkansas began allowing gaming in 2005. Southland introduced its first games in 2006. By 2015, it was opening a $38 million expansion, adding a sports bar and grill and increasing its number of gaming machines to 1,700.

In 2018, Southland Park became Southland Gaming. In late 2018, it announced plans for what was to be a $250 million hotel. Construction started in January 2019.

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In 2019, when it started to phase out dog racing, Southland was running 6,656 races a year. This year, the runs dropped to less than half of that or about 54 a week.

At the time of this writing, 14 were scheduled for Saturday. The post time was 1 p.m., meaning the last race would run around 5:30 p.m.

“We celebrated the end of racing on Dec. 17 with a private event to honor the people that had an impact in the industry,” Imomoh said. “You have people who have raced here and worked here for a very long time.”

Southland will continue to offer simulcast betting on both horses and dogs after the dogs stop running in West Memphis.

About 800 greyhounds were on the property earlier in the week. Every one of them will have a home, Imomoh said, in a process that could take up to a month and a half.

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The Mid-South Greyhound Adoption Option, which has had helped connect retired greyhounds to adopters since 1991, is no longer accepting applications.

Maureen Woodruff, who adopted two retired greyhounds over the years, is happy the dogs’ days are over at Southland.

“These beautiful, agile, incredible dogs that have been a part of our world history for so long, shouldn’t be used as way for people to gamble,” Woodruff said. 

A story of additions

As state legislation has enhanced gaming, Southland has grown. From the seventh floor of the hotel, one can see the wings that have been added to accommodate people’s appetite for the practice.

Southland has not announced its plans for the dog track and the nearly 130,000 square feet that, for decades, were the public side of the park.

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Hundreds of slot machines were moved to the new casino floor from the lower level last spring. Today, that space is dark and locked.

The upper deck viewing area will close for good Saturday evening. So will the kennels and breeding areas, their blue roofs visible in the distance from the watch deck.

“Long term, we’re going to have a lot of things,” said Imomoh as he looked out the angled windows over acres of Delaware’s land. “When you look at what could happen here as an entertainment venue, it’s amazing.”

Within the year, Delaware is expected to announce additional investments, he said, which could include a theater or performance venue.

Imomoh returned in July from Naperville, Illinois, to run what is now Delaware’s signature property, including overseeing the last of the construction on the hotel. The final floors opened in mid-December, including 12 penthouses, several in excess of 950 square feet.

Rooms and suites, all with floor-to-ceiling windows and walk-in, rain-head showers and other luxury appointments are priced on Southland’s website. A deluxe room with a king bed for two days next week will run $126 a night, excluding taxes and other fees.

Imomoh, who was born in Nigeria, went to high school in the Netherlands and college at the University of Houston, got his professional training with Delaware. He even had an earlier stint at Southland, starting in 2006, before Delaware “sent me on an adventure across America,” he said, to climb its internal structure.

Back then, Southland was “a little dog” in the marketplace, Imomoh said. 

“What changed here was the faith the company had in the city and this area. They invested in it. They had a vision for it.

“They believed in the people that worked here and, slowly but surely, we have grown from the small dog track to the leading casino.”