After two years of construction, the Blue Chip Casino, Hotel & Spa has opened its $130 million expanded venue in Michigan City, Ind., Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming announced last month. Located approximately 60 miles east of Chicago, the property opened on Jan. 22 and now includes a 302-room upscale hotel tower, a 10,000-square-foot spa, two new restaurants and a 20,000-square-foot event center for entertainment, meetings and special events.
"With this expansion, Blue Chip Casino, Hotel & Spa becomes the premier entertainment destination in the region," Boyd Gaming President and CEO Keith Smith said in a statement. "Visitors to Las Vegas or Atlantic City have long enjoyed a host of amenities under one roof. For the first time, we're bringing that successful model to this region, and we think it will be attractive to customers throughout the upper Midwest."
The centerpiece of the new Blue Chip—the so-called "New Blue"—is the 22-story Spa Blue Tower, which evokes nearby Lake Michigan with its blue vision glass facade and is one of the tallest structures in Northwest Indiana.
Combined with Blue Chip's pre-existing facilities, the Spa Blue Tower and the rest of the hotel-casino's expansion gives the property a total of 486 guest rooms inside two hotel towers, not to mention six restaurants, 65,000 square feet of single-level casino space and over 30,000 square feet of meeting, convention and event space.
While that includes an existing 5,500-square-foot ballroom and three meeting and function rooms within the casino pavilion, the highlight of Blue Chip's meeting facilities is the new 20,000-square-foot Stardust Event Center, which offers four function rooms as well as a 2,000-square-foot stage inside a 15,000-square-foot ballroom that can accommodate as many as 900 attendees.
"We've designed our new convention and entertainment venue for flexibility," Blue Chip Director of Sales Deann Patena said in a statement. "It will be perfect for extravagant exhibitions, yet we will be able to host small, intimate gatherings."