Market8 Releases New Rendering for Casino Complex

Sign up for our weekly home and property newsletter, featuring homes for sale, neighborhood happenings, and more.

One of the six contenders for Philadelphia’s second casino license, Market8 — an investor group helmed by Ken Goldenberg and Ira Luber, among others — has just released a new vision of what it calls its “urban entertainment center” proposed for Eighth and Market. The announcement emphasizes the commitment to ground-floor retail and restaurants “on a newly beautified Market Street” (their optimism is boundless).

Ken Goldenberg says in the statement:

“We are designing the ground floor to fully engage walkers and commuters, recognizing not just how central our location is, but how critical this is to the vitality of this corridor. We will be opening up that level with transparency, doorways, tables and outdoor seating that will allow 8th and Market to become an attractive social place to meet for lunch, dinner, or coffee, and a place that will create energy and excitement all hours of the day and evening.”

As for the interior:

MARKET8’s levels will be connected physically and visually by escalators sculpted around a 4-story, dynamic video feature … starting at the ground floor and leading up through four levels of entertainment. The second and third floors are dedicated to casino space bordered by a full complement of bars, fine and casual dining, live entertainment, VIP gaming and lounges. The fourth floor provides a robust mix of additional entertainment offerings including a concert hall/multi-purpose venue which will accommodate live performances, banquets, meetings, and boxing, a poker room, and a 2-story “ultra-lounge” with dining and dancing. The fifth floor will consist of an attractive hotel reception area with lounges.

Mitchell Etess, CEO of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, which would act as operator of the space, says the range of activities will allow people to go from a live concert to “a quiet bar” to watch a baseball game (clearly, Etess doesn’t know Phillies fans if he thinks a bar crowd watching baseball would be “quiet”).

The hotel is slated to be a four-star, 168-room tower that would change the skyline.