Kalispels clear air at casino
Something has been left out of Northern Quest Casino’s new 6,500-square-foot gaming room.
Ashtrays.
But for many of the patrons, a nonsmoking room is just what the doctor ordered.
“It’s way overdue,” said Hank Boles of Deer Park, one of many people who eagerly waited outside the new area Friday afternoon while Kalispel tribal dignitaries performed a perfunctory ribbon-cutting ceremony. “It’s been too long that we had to be with the smokers.”
The Airway Heights casino opened in 2000 at a cost of $29 million. The nonsmoking room, in the northwest corner of the sprawling building, was originally the Pend Oreille Pavilion. Last fall, the casino added a $12 million addition that included a 1,200-seat event center with the idea of converting the old pavilion into a nonsmoking room.
The room has 185 slot machines, four game tables and a cashier and ticket cage. Five poker tables will be ready by Monday morning and an additional five will be moved in by Tuesday.
The existing eight-table poker area, which is nonsmoking but is not separated from the smoking area by walls, will be converted into an Asian noodle bar, said Jennifer Simmons, public relations coordinator.
Northern Quest’s remodeled area is the largest nonsmoking gaming room in the region. Coeur d’Alene Casino in Worley, Idaho, has more than 100 slot machines in a non-smoking area, but it is not walled off. Chewelah Casino, a tribal casino in Stevens County, has designated the restaurant as nonsmoking. Patrons can smoke in the casino.
Popular non-tribal card rooms, such as Big Daddy’s on the South Hill, Players & Spectators in Spokane Valley and Classic Road Casino at Lilac Lanes on the North Side, have nonsmoking card rooms. However, smoking is allowed in other parts of the casinos. Marilyn’s on Monroe, the newest addition in the fast-growing casino/card room business, allows smoking, but not in the restaurant.
“Nonsmoking areas (as opposed to enclosed rooms) are small solutions to a bigger problem,” Simmons said. “When it’s in the air, it’s in the air.”
Simmons said that since Northern Quest opened, the customers’ big requests have been for more parking and a nonsmoking room.
“People have been waiting for this room for a long time,” Simmons said.
Indeed. Within 10 minutes of the ribbon cutting, the nonsmoking room was the hottest hangout in the casino, primarily with older patrons trying their luck on the slots.
“I’m a nonsmoker; this will be nicer. … more fresh air,” said Clare Brodeur of Spokane, who also frequents Coeur d’Alene and Bonners Ferry’s Kootenai River Inn & Casino.
“We are consumer driven,” Simmons said. “We have that luxury being a tribal casino.”
Consumer Roger Blum of the Spokane Valley already is looking ahead.
“It’s going to be too small,” said Blum, who was eager to drop down money Friday on a new smoke-free slot machine.