With opening day of just a few weeks away, workers Tuesday installed a 50-foot replica of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster electric guitar over the main entrance to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. Inside, Hard Rock employees started hanging rock-'n'-roll memorabilia. The $200 million-plus complex is scheduled to open May 11.
It will include 2,300 gaming machines, 65 poker tables, 130,000 square feet of casino space, a Hard Rock Cafe, a casino bar with 42 suspended plasma television screens, a spa and a 5,600-seat arena. It will also have 300,000 square feet of retail space, restaurants and clubs.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida, which has 3,000 members, generates $300 million a year from its gambling empire. The tribe has other gaming facilities in Coconut Creek, Tampa, Immokalee and the Brighton Reservation.
''We are incredibly enthusiastic about the finished product,'' said James Allen, the tribe's chief executive officer of gaming operations. ``It has exceeded our expectations.''
The massive guitar, at the 100-acre complex north of Stirling Road between U.S. 441 and Florida's Turnpike, will be lighted around the clock.
The guitar is a sculptured piece of art, not a sign, said Nelson Baranes, an account executive with Total Identity Group, a Rochester, N.Y.-based sign and awning manufacturer.
Before it arrived in Hollywood on two flatbed trucks, the guitar sat in four pieces at the company's warehouse. |
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