Blue skies for Orange County: long-awaited casino project now taking shape.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy
• Position: REGIONAL REPORT SOUTH

A DECADE IN THE MAKING, the green light for gaming in Orange County is signaling $250 million in renovation and new construction, along with 1,400 jobs as French Lick and West Baden leverage historic venues into tomorrow's tourism draw.

Pending Indiana Gaming Commission approval, visitors can start cashing in December 2006, when the 80,000-square-foot casino--40 percent of it a single-level gaming floor--opens in French Lick, about 100 miles south of Indianapolis. An August ceremonial groundbreaking marked the beginning of the project.

Aptly named because it brings new hope to a community of about 2,800 residents long pining for jobs, Blue Sky Casino LLC is building the gaming site, the only Indiana-owned casino of the state's 11 at what residents say is a most unique location.

Its 1,000 slot machines and 25 gaming tables in a nautical decor--a nod to the state's original requirement that the 11 gaming licenses authorized by the General Assembly be on boats--are just the beginning of promised fun.

Golf courses, including a spruced-up Donald Ross-designed course that once hosted the PGA Championship, spas, swimming pools and restaurants will offer other resort diversions. The area's two restored historic hotels will offer 680 rooms.

French Lick Springs Resort & Casino, first built in the mid-1800s and rebuilt in 1917, will feature 440 fully remodeled and re-furnished rooms. The adjacent, newly built casino will be accessible via an enclosed walkway.

West Baden Springs Resort, built in 1902 and just a mile away, will offer 240 upscale rooms and suites. Full renovations of those properties and addition of other amenities by Blue Sky Casino LLC are slated for completion by year-end 2007.

Also planned: a 75,000-square-foot conference center, entertainment lounge with stage, 800-space parking garage, retail center and even townhomes, all with plenty of room to grow on the available 3,000 acres.

"It's almost like we ran a marathon for years, and finally we've completed the race," says Adina Cloud, chair of the French Lick/ West Baden Historic Hotel Preservation Commission, the group that negotiated casino applications and made recommendations to Indiana's Gaming Commission. She was one of many who donned orange shirts over the years to lobby the Indiana Legislature for casino rights in her lifelong home county

"We have 150 years of tourism history with these two amazing historic hotels, and now we have a casino applicant who wants to preserve and...