Casper has long been a crossroads and key stop for westward travelers.
West side revitalization
Building the hotel and conference center on the former refinery site would put “a footprint on the west side of the downtown area,” said Bratton. That could help with city efforts to revitalize both the Yellowstone district and the downtown district.
“Casper is trying to be more progressive these days than it has in the past,” he said. “Instead of sticking to what it’s always been, which is energy-based, we’re trying to diversify our economic development a little bit and attract different markets.”
If necessary approvals and financing can be secured soon, site work could begin as early as October and be complete within 24 months, according to Bratton.
“The JJM Group is already working on booking conferences and getting things scheduled,” he said.
A local real estate company is working with JJM on the project. That partnership is not the only business investing in Casper. Owners of the Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Centre and the Ramada Plaza Riverside Hotel and Convention Center are putting money into their properties.
The 301-room Parkway Plaza has more than 25,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. Each of the 100 rooms in the hotel’s tower section has been renovated, sales manager Karen Jackson said, and owner Pat Sweeney is now starting on the 200 rooms in the hotel’s two-story “horseshoe section.” That work will be done in phases over the next year to avoid disrupting business, Jackson said.
A few of the hotel’s 16 meeting rooms have been painted and recarpted, and the remainder will get the same freshening in the next year. The hotel updated all its audiovisual components and its Wi-Fi system in the past year and plans to buy new banquet chairs and tables, Jackson said.
Regaining business
“I can tell you, it [the updating] has been instrumental in getting groups back that have been lost,” she said.
At the Ramada Plaza, all 200 rooms have been refreshed with new bedding, lighting, refrigerators, microwaves and flat-screen televisions, according to Karin East, the hotel’s director of sales.
Built in 1964, the Ramada is the oldest of the city’s three larger full-service properties, so much of the work is being done to “keep up with the Joneses” or to catch up to code, East said.
About $1.5 million has been spent to update all the electrical and to widen hallways and doors in the conference center to meet fire codes. Another $500,000 to $800,000 is planned in capital improvements in the coming year, which could include new banquet equipment and carpet, East said.
The hotel has 10 meeting rooms totaling 10,000 square feet, including a 2,900-square-foot ballroom. East said the Ramada’s niche is events for 150 to 200 people.
One bonus of holding meetings and events in Casper is that “they’re really noticed in town” and garner community support and media coverage, East said.
“In Denver, a convention of 500 people, nobody really knows they’re there because of the size [of the city],” she said. “When a convention comes here, everyone in town knows. To us, a meeting of 500 people is a decent size.”
One of Casper’s biggest events is the College National Finals Rodeo (CNFR), known as the Rose Bowl of rodeo, said Roger Walters, commissioner for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association.
