Big plans for Falls casino
By Mark Scheer
Thursday, June 24, 2026

In 18 months, the group has managed to build and open two casinos, complete construction on a parking ramp and start work on a $192 million, 600-room hotel.

During a discussion Wednesday on the state of gaming in New York, representatives from Seneca Niagara Gaming Corp. told industry leaders that they believe they have used early returns wisely, putting them in a good position to move forward with even bigger expansion plans.

These include the development of two more hotels and a family entertainment center in downtown Niagara Falls within the next five years.

“We’re a young company,” Seneca Niagara Casino President and CEO G. Michael Brown, speaking to a group of about 200 industry leaders who gathered for the third annual New York Gaming Summit at Turning Stone Casino Resort in Verona. “We’re growing, and I think the future is only going to get better.”

Brown, who led off a discussion on the Seneca Gaming Opportunity during Wednesday’s seminar, described for the audience a robust picture of the state of gaming affairs within the Seneca Nation of Indians. He said the first year of operation of Seneca Niagara Casino garnered gross revenues of $280 million, a situation that allowed the gaming corporation to construct its other Class III gaming facility in Salamanca without accruing any debt or obtaining assistance from outside financiers.

Brown boasted of having a registered player base of 340,000 people at Seneca Niagara Casino in 2003, including 100,000 customers that he says visited from out of state.

At Seneca Allegany Casino, which opened in May on the Allegany Reservation in Salamanca, Brown said 40,000 players have been registered, with nearly 50 percent of them visiting from neighboring Pennsylvania and Ohio.

“We’ve got a big market,” said Brown, noting that the Seneca Nation of Indians, under its compact with New York state, enjoys exclusivity for gaming operations in a 10,500-square-mile area of Western New York that includes territory from Lake Ontario south to Pennsylvania’s northern border.

On the topic of potential threats to the Seneca’s market from new competition across the border in Canada, Brown said he believes the recent opening of the $1 billion Fallsview Casino and Resort in Ontario will help more than it will hurt.

“The week that they opened our business was off one-tenth of one percent so they’ve had no effect on us,” Brown said.

“They have generated an international resort, and I commend them for it,” he added. “I think in the long run it is going to add to what we do, and I hope that we make a contribution to what they do.”

The Seneca’s are already making plans to keep pace with their competitors. Construction is continuing on the 162-room spa hotel that will be connected to Seneca Niagara Casino at its eastern entrance. The facility is expected to be completed by Fall 2005.

While the gaming corporation is no longer interested in the Holiday Inn Select, Brown said it still wants to acquire an existing hotel property downtown.

“We’re still in the market,” he said.  Additional projects in the gaming corporation’s five-year master plan for Niagara Falls include an 850-room grand hotel and casino, a family entertainment complex and a combination conference center, hotel and entertainment center. Plans call for those structures to be built to the east of the existing casino where the former Niagara Splash Park and a Pizza Hut restaurant are now located. Those properties are within the 52 acres that has been promised to the Senecas by the state under the gaming compact.

Annette Mohawk-Smith, chief financial officer for the gaming corporation, said the success of her group’s early gaming efforts have created confidence among the private investment community, allowing the corporation to recently enter the bond market to secure $300 million needed to finance its future projects.
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