|
|
|
|
|
The Roseburg News Review---April 21, 2007
Sue Shaffer, Cow Creek tribal chair, confirms plans to build 152 more hotel rooms and to add an upscale spa at Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort but the present focus is on needed expansion of the sports bar.
These additions will create more permanent, well paying jobs.
By Paul Craig
There are still plans to expand the outside of the Seven Feathers Hotel & Casino Resort, but expansion inside is happening first.
STIX, the 3 1/2-year-old sports bar in the casino, closed April 12. When it reopens July 1, it will have nearly doubled in size.
The 1,400-square-foot dining and drinking spot will have around 1,250 square feet added to it.
Upward of 450 people pass through STIX on any given weekend night, according to Larry Lydick, director of food and beverage at Seven Feathers.
"Every year, it continues to exceed our expectations by roughly 10 percent," he said. "It's done very well since the day it opened."
The expansion of STIX is a precursor, of sorts, to plans for the hotel and resort as a whole.
Last year, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, which owns Seven Feathers, announced plans to double the hotel's potential occupancy by adding a new wing of rooms.
That expansion still hasn't started and there is no timeline for it to begin.
The addition of 152 more hotel rooms remains the plan, however, according to Sue Shaffer, chairwoman of the tribe.
"We're putting on the hotel rooms," she said.
Shaffer said a plan won't be set for that until after STIX is finished. Expansion projects at Seven Feathers will be coordinated in sequences so they don't overlap.
STIX is "one part" of the growth, she said. The hotel expansion is another, as is the plan for an upscale spa.
Shaffer said tribal staff have been evaluating other spas to determine the types of amenities a Seven Feathers spa will need to provide.
"I think that will be exciting," she said.
It was important to first expand STIX, Shaffer said, so that the business could accommodate increased guests brought by the addition of more rooms.
It wasn't necessarily an anticipated expansion, however.
"That place has been absolutely popular beyond all belief," Shaffer said. "The projections we had for that were nothing compared to what it has been."
It will be bigger still, once construction is complete.
At least eight more flat-screen televisions will be added to the 11 currently in the bar, Lydick said. The kitchen will also be expanded to nearly three times its current size.
The kitchen is the oldest on the property. It was the kitchen for the original bingo hall that grew into the current casino.
Lydick said the new kitchen gives staff the opportunity to expand the menu and produce more quality products.
"The whole dynamics of the kitchen change into more of a real line that can produce larger quantities of food in a shorter amount of time," he said.
Stix currently employs 15, with 12 bartenders and servers running the front of the house and three cooks in back.
Eight new positions will be created with the expansion, Lydick said.
While work is being done, hours have been added at the casino's lounge. A satellite bar near the convention center in the resort may also be set up on Friday and Saturday nights.
The additional space for Stix comes from administrative offices and a medical room that have been relocated on site. Construction began last Monday.
"There's quite a bit of deconstruction to reconstruct," Lydick said.