Graton casino hotel expansion on time for Nov. 15 debut

The $175 million project has thousands of nights already booked ahead of its November opening, hotel officials said.|

Graton Resort and Casino officials on Wednesday offered a sneak peek inside their 200-room hotel expansion, which will effectively transform the gambling palace on the edge of Rohnert Park into a full-fledged, Las Vegas-style resort complex when it debuts in about seven weeks.

The $175 million project remains on track for a Nov. 15 opening and thousands of nights are already booked, hotel officials said. In addition to providing guest accommodations, the expansion will also add a 20,000-square-foot multipurpose space, a luxurious pool, a spa and a fitness center to the nearly 3-year old casino.

“This completes, or is the icing on the cake, of what we’ve always wanted to be,” said Greg Sarris, chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which owns the resort. “We didn’t want to have just a casino - and, of course, the wonderful restaurants, and we love the casino - but we wanted a facility here in the Wine Country ... where Sonoma County and the North Bay could have conventions, and much of what is lacking, I think, in the larger community.”

The six-story hotel expansion broke ground last September and is the resort’s most significant project since the Graton tribe and Las Vegas-based Station Casinos, which operates the facilities, opened the original $800 million casino portion in November 2013.

Rooms and suites range in size from 500 square feet to 2,600 square feet. Rates are starting at $399 for weekdays and $499 for weekends, plus taxes and fees.

During a media tour of the facility, officials showed off a completed third-floor standard room and an in-progress suite on the top floor. Both featured floor-to-ceiling windows, providing a view of the pool in the standard room and an expansive view of the Sonoma Mountain range facing Highway 101 in the suite.

The 2,600-square-foot suite had two bedrooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms, a bar with backlit onyx shelves and a butler’s quarters. Renderings indicate the suite will accommodate dining and living room furniture and a pool table when completed.

Loyal high rollers will get first dibs on those suites but they could sell for $2,000 or more on weeknights based on current room rates, according to Joe Hasson, the resort’s vice president and general manager.

Demand for the new hotel rooms is high, with some nights already booked in 2018, Hasson said.

“I was actually surprised by that. I had to ask a salesperson to double-check the date,” he said. “It speaks to how this is resonating throughout the lodging community.”

Hasson and Sarris both emphasized the potential of the new multipurpose space, which can seat up to 800 people for catered events and 1,700 for live entertainment, according to the resort. The space includes the cavernous ballroom that can be partitioned into seven smaller rooms, and more intimate meeting space overlooking the resort’s pool.

Sarris in an interview described the ballroom as a badly needed space for the region.

“Sonoma County has been unable to facilitate large conventions all in one hotel, and now that ballroom allows us to do that,” he said.

At the resort’s pool area, meanwhile, guests will be able to lounge among palm trees at in dozens of chaises, beds and loungers, in one of eight private cabanas or at waterproof furniture in the pool itself, hotel officials said.

Taken together, the forthcoming additions will make the Graton resort feel much more like the kind of destination gambling resort found in Las Vegas. But resort leaders have also sought to make it reflective of Wine Country, including murals of North Coast vineyards and oceanside by the ballroom.

“You don’t see neon and lots of those kinds of lights or bright colors,” Sarris said of the resort. “You see stonework; you see colors that reflect the mountains. ... In that way, we want to make it warm and make it, as I like to say, Sonoma County- appropriate.”

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.