The future mini-casino in Centre County will have Bally’s Corp. as a partner developing and managing it under an agreement announced Monday with private investor Ira Lubert.
Lubert won the right to put the mini-casino in the State College area with a high bid of $10 million at a Sept. 2 Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board auction, but scant details about plans for the project have emerged since then.
A press release from Bally’s stated it has signed “a framework agreement with Ira Lubert to jointly design, develop, construct and manage a Category 4 licensed casino.” It said construction would begin in the first half of 2021 and take about one year to complete, with an overall project cost of $120 million.
No site was identified, but local officials in Centre County have assumed the location would be in vacant department store space at Nittany Mall in College Township, about two miles from Penn State’s Beaver Stadium.