One of the nation’s largest casino operators appears to be stepping in to help get the Pamunkey Indian Tribe’s Norfolk casino project off the ground.
According to city documents expected to go before city council in the coming weeks, Boyd Gaming is set to become a majority owner in the tribe’s development partner for its long-awaited Norfolk casino.
Boyd will own the majority interest in Golden Eagle Consulting, the company created by gambling billionaire Jon Yarbrough to develop the casino with the Pamunkey, by the time it closes on the city-owned land next to Harbor Park.
The tribe itself will also take an equity stake of at least 20% in Golden Eagle.
Boyd’s newfound ownership will allow it to take the lead on developing the casino project. It’s not clear from the documents how Boyd will acquire its stake in Golden Eagle or how Yarbrough fits into the casino’s plans going forward.
Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander said Tuesday Boyd is the right partner for the tribe to get this project moving.
“Of course, they were struggling to get the project out of the ground,” Alexander said. “Bringing in Boyd — someone with the ability and the wherewithal and experience and more importantly the financial strength to build a world-class casino resort hotel — is exactly what we need.”
The move comes after years of unexplained delays and a looming deadline to get a casino open or lose the authorization voters approved in 2020.
Despite being the first casino announced in the state and spurring a legislative dash to legalize commercial casinos, the Pamunkey’s project has gone nowhere.
The tribe’s $500 million resort casino complex design still doesn’t have city approval. Meanwhile, Rivers Casino in Portsmouth has been up and running for a year and a half. Two more casinos will open in the western part of the state later this year.
Boyd Gaming operates 28 casinos in 10 states and manages a tribal casino in Northern California, according to the company’s website.
It also operates an online casino, Boyd Interactive, and owns a small stake in online sports betting site FanDuel.
The company did $3.7 billion dollars in business in 2023, posting a profit of $620 million.
Boyd is expected to step in to handle the financing, development and operations of the Pamunkey Tribe’s planned casino. It may also get a new name, according to members of the development team speaking at a city meeting last month.
The company and tribe issued a brief joint statement to WHRO Tuesday, saying "Boyd Gaming has started the process required to help the Tribe bring its vision to fruition, in a way that will deliver meaningful benefits for the Tribe, the City of Norfolk and the Commonwealth of Virginia."
The revised development agreement includes an updated timeline listing a construction completion date of September 2027.
The clock is ticking on the project. If the tribe can’t at least open a temporary casino at the location next to Harbor Park by November 2025, it won’t get its state license and the voter referendum authorizing the project will be null and void.
At that point, the city would have to make a request to the General Assembly to hold a new voter referendum. That would delay the project for at least another year and could endanger it altogether if the city can't win over an impatient legislature and a public that's been wondering where this project has been for the last three years.
“It gave us concern that (Golden Eagle was) running out of time to meet their obligation to secure a license,” Alexander, the mayor, previously told WHRO. “It gave pause and concern that they had not submitted a full set of building plans that we can respond to.”
Alexander reiterated Tuesday that the council held out for a single-phase project in line with what Norfolk’s voters approved in 2020, which wasn’t what was previously offered by the tribe and Golden Eagle.
HOW WE GOT HERE
The Pamunkey Indian Tribe is still the city’s preferred developer and will own the casino.
Jon Yarbrough, a billionaire venture capitalist from Tennessee, partnered with the Pamunkey Tribe in 2017, after the tribe’s newfound federal recognition allowed them to open a casino in Virginia regardless of the state’s prohibition on commercial casinos.
He loaned the tribe, through a company called Golden Eagle Consulting, $20 million dollars and his company committed hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the casino’s construction.
Yarbrough made his fortune in video slots. He sold a company called Video Gaming Technologies to an Australian conglomerate for $1.3 billion in 2014. His company previously partnered with other Native American tribes to provide machines for their casinos.
Casino gambling was banned in Virginia for generations, though the lottery and horseracing existed and different types of slot machines made their way into the state. Casino operations popping up in Delaware in the 1990s and Maryland in the 2010s didn’t sway lawmakers.
But the plan from Yarbrough and the Pamunkey threw the floodgates wide open. Just a few months after the plan became public in December 2018, Virginia’s General Assembly reversed course, approving commercial casinos in five cities across the state.
Voters in Norfolk and other cities approved local referendums in 2020, paving the way for developers to get things going.
But the Pamunkey proposal fell behind the other efforts. Portsmouth’s Rivers Casino opened in January 2023. The casino raked in $250 million in revenue in its first year of operation, handing Portsmouth $15 million in taxes.
Casinos in Danville and Bristol are slated to open later this year.
Meanwhile, not an ounce of dirt has moved on the site next to Harbor Park that the Pamunkey set their sights on nearly 6 years ago.
Plans presented to the city last year were rejected because the tribe said it wanted to build in phases — first the casino, then a hotel later. In January, the tribe submitted and then abruptly withdrew new plans.
Those withdrawn plans showed a 65,000 square-foot casino with several restaurants, a 12-story hotel, spa and fitness center. The plan also dropped a planned marina on the Elizabeth River which had appeared in earlier iterations of the plan.
There’s been little public explanation for the continuing delays.
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO reported a year ago that Norfolk city leaders were considering dropping the tribe in favor of another developer — in part due to the unexplained lack of progress. Alexander has repeatedly denied this to WHRO.
State leaders have even leaned on Norfolk to get the project moving.
Del. Barry Knight, a Virginia Beach Republican who previously helmed the House of Delegates’ Appropriations committee, told a group of Republicans behind closed doors that he blames the city for the delays while the city shifts blame to the tribe.
Early drafts of the state budget from Gov. Glenn Youngkin also tied some funding for Norfolk’s massive flood wall project to the completion of the casino, though the final budget didn’t include that rider.
