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December 12, 2014

12/12/2014: Old Mississippi, US Casino site will be home to barge port, grain elevator

Tunica County hit the jackpot. Not with another casino, but a new river port and grain elevator, WREG-TV reports.

Consolidated Grain and Barge Company wants to put the new port where Splash Casino once stood on Moon Landing Road.

“I remember Splash as being one of the first casinos to hit the Tunica County area,” Jimmie French said.

 

http://wreg.com/2014/12/11/splash-casino-site-will-be-home-to-18-million-barge-port-grain-elevator/

French, who lives in Tunica County, hated to see Splash Casino close, but is glad a new barge port and grain elevator will take its place.

“It might produce a few jobs here locally for this economy. So it’s not a bad thing, not a bad thing,” he said.

Workers demolished the abandoned casino, which opened in 1992 and closed three years later. They’re making way for an US$18 million facility.

Buckley Graves and his family own the farmland Splash and a few other casinos once called home. He said Splash and the other casinos that sprang up the near the Mississippi River certainly changed the landscape and the economy, but they didn’t stay as long as expected.

“When Sam’s Town came into Robinsonville, they left and all went to Robinsonville. And we were left with farmland again, essentially with parking lots in the middle,” Buckley Graves, farmer and CEO of Parker Tractor in Tunica, said.

Graves said his family was approached two years ago by Consolidated with their proposal to buy the land and build the port.

The grain elevator will give farmers like Graves a closer place to bring their grain at harvest time.

“It’s going to cut our hauling in half. We have to go to Friars Point or Helena or President’s Island to haul our grain,” Graves said.

He said Consolidated picked the Splash site because of its location near the Mississippi River and because paved roads were already in place.

Graves said no one could have predicted it back then, but Splash really laid the foundation for what’s turning out to be a sure bet.

“We just farmed it all these years. And then they brought the casino and the casino provided the infrastructure for the elevator to be there,” Graves said.

The facility will employ ten full-time workers and some part-time workers. The project is expected to be ready by harvest time in 2015.
  


Read more HERE.
 

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