River Rock Casino in Geyserville, CA -- located in Sonoma wine country -- will transform to become Caesars Republic Sonoma County.
This will be the third Caesars property in California, along with Harrah's Resort Southern California (formerly Rincon) in northern San Diego County, and Harrah's Resort Northern California (which is northeast of Stockton).
Geyserville is just 80 miles north of San Francisco, and is only slightly north of Santa Rosa. Caesars Republic was originally a brand launched to house non-gaming Caesars properties, but that idea has since been abandoned, and now is the brand of the redeveloped Harvey's Lake Tahoe and this new property in Geyserville.
This is not an entirely new development, but the hotel will be built from the ground up, because River Rock presently has no hotel.
Like the other two Caesars casinos in California, this will be Indian owned, but associated with Caesars Rewards.
The hotel will be relatively small -- just 100 rooms -- and presumably will cater both to Bay Area visitors and those who want to combine a wine country trip with gambling. It's actually a fairly good idea. I didn't understand the other Northern California property, as it's essentially in the middle of nowhere without much to do, and is inferior to other casino offerings nearby.
Here's an artist's rendering of what the property will look like:
The construction financing will be provided by GLPI (a real estate investment firm specializing in physical land/buildings for casinos) and Citizens Bank.
It looks like Caesars isn't taking much of a risk here, basically stamping their name on it, using their rewards program, and managing the resort. Caesars has the same "management" deal with the other two California tribal casinos, though the Indian owners themselves have the final say in everything.
It is notable that the two other California Caesars properties presently have among the worst paytable video poker in the Caesars portfolio.
This one might be worth visiting if you have status at Caesars and want to stay somewhere free/cheap, while visiting northern California wine country.
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