The Cordish Companies and Bruce Smith Enterprise raised the final structural beam on Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia last week, marking the topping-out of a 445,000-square-foot gaming and hospitality resort in Petersburg, Va., that is projected to deliver $2.8 billion in regional economic impact over its first decade.
The permanent resort replaces a temporary casino facility that opened on the same I-95 site in January 2026. Slated for a late-2027 debut, the full property sits roughly 25 miles south of Richmond at the Wagner Road interchange — a high-traffic corridor that gives developers a natural draw from both the Richmond metro and the North Carolina market to the south.
The F&B Program
With 20 restaurant and bar concepts planned across the resort, food and beverage is a central commercial pillar of the development. Anchor concepts include Sports & Social, a USA Today Top 10 Sports Bar honoree operating in 18 locations nationwide — including properties adjacent to Truist Park in Atlanta and Busch Stadium in St. Louis — which will anchor an 8,000-square-foot venue anchored by an 82-foot-wide LED display wall. The Prime Rib®, a fine-dining brand rated No. 1 by Zagat across its Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania and Louisiana locations and a 2026 Wine Spectator Award of Excellence recipient, adds an upscale steakhouse tier. Luk Fu, a Pan-Asian concept honored as "Best Asian and Best Sushi" by Casino Player Magazine's 2025 Best of Dining & Nightlife Awards, rounds out the flagship trio. Both Luk Fu and The Prime Rib interiors are being designed by Beth Bloom Designs, a national hospitality-focused firm. Additional local partnerships are expected to be announced before opening.
For hospitality-focused foodservice operators, the lineup reflects the broader integrated-resort playbook: pair a high-volume sports bar with a white-tablecloth anchor and an experiential ethnic-cuisine concept to cover daypart range and guest-occasion breadth. It is an approach that has proven durable at Live!'s Maryland and Philadelphia properties, both of which draw comparable regional drive markets.
Scale and Economics
Beyond the dining program, the resort will feature more than 1,600 Vegas-style slot machines, 70-plus live table games including a 35-table poker room, a sportsbook, a 200-room upscale hotel with a resort pool and spa, and a 70,000-square-foot multi-purpose event center. Over ten years the project is projected to generate $504 million in tax revenues — $240 million of which flows to Petersburg — and $201 million in annual economic benefits post-opening.
On the jobs front, the temporary Live! Casino Virginia already employs more than 600 permanent workers. The resort opening is expected to add roughly 1,000 more positions in gaming, hotel services, culinary, bartending, events and security. Richard Bland College's Dealer Institute, run in partnership with Live!, offers a free seven-week table-games training program; the next cohort begins November 16, 2026.
"With its scale, quality and breadth of offerings, Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia will establish a new standard for gaming, hospitality and entertainment in the Commonwealth," said David Cordish, CEO and Chairman of The Cordish Companies.
For operators tracking integrated resort development as a competitive foodservice channel, the Petersburg property is worth watching. Casino resorts increasingly function as destination dining hubs that pull discretionary food-and-beverage spend away from freestanding restaurants and, at the margin, from convenience-oriented dining stops along the same interstate corridors. The I-95 corridor between Richmond and the North Carolina line has seen sustained traffic growth, and a 445,000-square-foot entertainment anchor at that interchange adds meaningful gravity to the trade area.
A Local Contractor & Vendor Fair — open to food-and-beverage suppliers, facilities vendors and construction subcontractors — is scheduled for October 14 at the Petersburg Public Library from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., hosted in partnership with the Virginia Department of Small Business & Supplier Diversity.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
