Page 18: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 1994)

Service Marine Industries Trinity Lockport Yard

VER: New Orleans, with its rich and colorful history, h of intensive riverboat gaming action.

Several shipyards, including Trinity Marine's Lockport Yard and Service Marine, have found the gaming vessel industry to be an attractive niche market. hhMH

Bauer Interiors.

Additionally, Avondale is build- ing the 350-fit. (106.7-m) Belle of

New Orleans for Bally's. This ves- sel, designed by Avondale's in-house team, with interior design from

Yates & Silverman, is scheduled for delivery in 1995. It will feature

Caterpillar main engines, Schottel thrusters and Reintjes gears.

Current business at Trinity in- cludes a 245-ft. (74.7-m) boat built for Hilton, completed in July, and the 322-ft. (98.1-m) permanent

Queen of New Orleans, which is scheduled for completion in Novem- ber. Service Marine Industries (SMI) can make a legitimate claim to being one of the top gaming vessel builders in the U.S. since the mar- ket roared to life in 1991. Since then, SMI has built (or is building) a total of 15 either dockside or self- propelled vessels.

The bottom line to the riverboat gaming industry, from the builder's side, is still quick design, construc- tion and delivery. An owner order- ing a boat for a new location today wants it delivered yesterday, and the yards must stay prepared to provide.

The Future Is Bright

Like his colleagues, Larry

Hairston, senior vice president of marketing at SMI sees the market in a lull, but is confident of its fu- ture. Aside from the obvious boosts successful resolutions in Missouri and Indiana would provide, Mr.

Hairston and his team are looking at a host of states and possibilities in anticipating the market's next move.

For example, he said that at press time the Illinois legislature was meeting in a special session, and a possible outcome may be 10 addi- tional licenses for the state, includ- ing five for Chicago. Also, there are indications that by the end of the year there may be five additional licenses available in Louisiana. This positive activity, combined with the "states to watch" (states which are considered close to, or at least inter- ested in riverboat gaming, includ- ing Pennsylvania, West Virginia,

Virginia, Ohio, Texas and Florida), make prospects for a long, healthy riverboat gaming market look prom- ising.

Mr. Lipely considers the loosen- ing of regulations in Iowa as a po- tential market opportunity, and similarly looks to West Virginia,

Virginia, Pennsylvania and Texas as the best near-term hopes, with

South Carolina and Ohio "a bit far- ther out."

It's a given that predicting the whims of the legislative process is next to impossible at best. How- ever, in planning the future workload, SMI has devised some promising numbers. Counting self- propelled and dockside facilities, Mr.

Hairston's market analysis indi- cates that there could be a call for 84 additional vessels from now until 1997.

While Edward Doherty, presi- dent of Atlantic Marine, is more reluctant to make number-of-vessel speculations, he too believes the market is still in for growth. "If these things (states) start to fall in place, things will pick up and we look for continued business (in the riverboat gaming sector)," said

Mr. Doherty.

Mr. Doherty hopes, as do all other builders and suppliers in- volved, that the market will invigo- rate itself once issues are settled and additional gaming laws are en- acted. But he maintains — as do other yards — that they are diversi- fied enough that not even losing all this valuable gaming work would put them out of business.

Most yards which have flourished in the gaming vessel market feature a varied and balanced workload, which includes newbuilds of vessels for different uses, such as dinner/ passenger and workboats, as well as improved repair and service activi- ties. "Trinity Marine Group is so di- versified that, although gaming is very important to us, if it does go into a longer-than-projected lull, we will be okay — because we're in- volved in so many other things," said Mr. Lipely.

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Page 4 World Gaming Congress & Exposition August, 1994