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The Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La.
Harrah's Entertainment Inc. won approval Tuesday for its plan to sell two riverboat casinos now based in Lake Charles to another gambling company that wants to move one of the boats elsewhere in Louisiana.
Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. plans to buy both casinos and use one as part of an expansion of its existing Lake Charles casino hotel, L'Auberge du Lac. The company wants to move the other casino to another parish, possibly East or West Baton Rouge, though the company has not decided on a location, said Wade Hundley, Pinnacle's president.
The Louisiana Gaming Control Board unanimously approved the $70 million sale of the two casino licenses.
Moving the boats still requires approval in a referendum from voters in Calcasieu Parish - for one boat's movement within Lake Charles - and from voters in the parish Pinnacle chooses for the other boat.
Hurricane Rita badly damaged the boats. Both have been out of operation since the storm hit last September.
Pinnacle and Harrah's announced an agreement in May to swap the remains of Pinnacle's Biloxi, Miss., casino, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina, for the Rita-damaged Lake Charles site.
As part of the deal, Pinnacle will pay Harrah's $70 million for the casino licenses and Harrah's former Lake Charles hotel, which will not reopen, the Las Vegas-based companies said.
Pinnacle also agreed to a noncompete clause under which the company said it would not open a gambing hall in either the New Orleans or Shreveport-Bossier City markets - where Harrah's operates casinos - for five years. If Pinnacle does open a casino in one of those areas, it would be forced to pay Harrah's $100 million.
Pinnacle already has plans to expand the year-old L'Auberge du Lac - one of Louisiana's most successful casinos - from 750 to 1,000 hotel rooms.
The company wants to use one of the Harrah's riverboat licenses for an adjacent casino resort, to be called Sugarcane Bay, planned as a 400-room, upscale hotel-casino with a Caribbean theme. The company already has exercised an option to buy land for Sugarcane Bay and has said it will spend $350 million on the project.
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