Amid the cobalt blue of the Gulf Coast and the lush greenery of Biloxi, a quiet battle brews in the corridors of Jackson, Mississippi. Lawmakers, poring over legalese and the weight of economic decisions, contemplate a pivotal piece of legislation that would recalibrate the framework of the state’s casino industry.
Whispers of Senate Bill 2780 echo through the state capital, a legislative creation by a cohort of Republican senators with a solitary Democrat ally. Their collective effort aims to refashion the venerable Mississippi Gaming Control Act, transforming the gateway through which the vibrant city of Biloxi and its sister Gulf towns greet new casino enterprisers.
The bill owes its birth to scars of the past—specifically those etched by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005—which left the casinos along the Gulf coast battered and bruised. In response, Mississippi’s leaders prudently shifted the gambling havens inland, demanding only that the sanctum of slot machines and roulette wheels not stray beyond 800 feet from their nautical nursery.
Currents shift and tides turn; so too do the ambitions of one Ray Wooldridge, a businessman with visions of neon lights and the cacophony of slot machines replacing the more innocent jingles of his Big Play Entertainment Center—an arcade nestled tantalizingly close to the critical 800-foot boundary from the high-water embrace of the Gulf.
The scent of opportunity was piquant after Biloxi pledged $3 million to RW Development for pier construction at the nexus of Veterans Avenue and Beach Boulevard—a strategic piece of real estate that ticked all the requisite boxes for Wooldridge’s casino aspirations.
Yet, the narrative complicates, entwined in legal tendrils, as Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch endeavors to combat Biloxi and Harrison County’s pier contract, deemed clandestinely awarded sans state sanction. Alas, the Mississippi Supreme Court dismissed Fitch’s arguments, entrusting the county with the jurisdiction to green-light the project without state Tidelands entitlement.
Herein lies the crux of Senate Bill 2780: it seeks to mandate more stringent steps for casino crusaders, necessitating a Tidelands lease—Mississippi’s tidal territories, wreathed in daily aquatic ballets—obtained through the Secretary of State, complete with its year-to-year rental character.
This litmus is engineered to deter the debatable RW Development nod from blooming into precedent, staunching the flow of similar ventures. January, however, crowned RW with site approval by the Mississippi Gaming Commission for their gaming palace.
“We need to restore a consistent regulatory environment to preserve the sand beach and encourage further investment in the Coast casino market,” Sen. David Blount, the bill’s champion and a proponent of Biloxi’s casino incumbents, confided to the Sun Herald.
Blount’s crusade distills into an ultimatum for newcomers like Wooldridge: shoulder the burden of expanding the casino ecosystem with not merely a gambling den but a resort—a minimum of 300 hotel rooms, a 40,000-square-foot casino, and a unique amenity that woos tourists and stirs economic blossoms. The Senate Gaming Committee currently scrutinizes the bill’s every clause and comma.
Wooldridge, for his part, perceives the existing Gulf casinos quaking before the specter of competition. His past boasts the impressive escapades of a business magnate; he offloaded his modular furniture empire Space Master International in the final year of the 20th century for a king’s ransom and played kingmaker in the NBA, shepherding the Charlotte Hornets to the Big Easy.
Yet, as the sun sets over the glittering waters of the Gulf and the Biloxi shoreline, Wooldridge’s sights are set—not on parquet basketball courts and the slam of dunks but on the rolling green baize of gaming tables and the dream of his greatest gamble yet.
