Sal Semola

With a long history in gaming, including running the Greektown Casino in Detroit and the Eastside Cannery in Las Vegas, Sal Semola joined Gun Lake Casino Resort in 2017 with a mission to dramatically expand the western Michigan casino. Recently, Gun Lake added a 252-room hotel and the Wawyé Oasis, an enclosed pool area that also hosts special events and concerts. Semola spoke with GGB Editor-at-Large Roger Gros from his office at Gun Lake. Listen here the full GGB Podcast of this interview.

GGB: Tell us what you saw when you first got to Gun Lake. What was the property like?

Semola: The property was originally developed by Station Casinos. It was a very well-maintained property as part of the tribe’s brand, which stresses quality and cleanliness. They’ve done a great job from when I first walked in. It looked like it was brand new, even though it was seven years old. The internal maintenance team is probably two and a half times the size you would typically expect for a casino of that size. That’s nice to see. That told me that there was a lot of pride in the property, not only at the ownership level, but with the team members as well.

What was the first thing you addressed when you got there?

There weren’t any raging fires. The tribe hired me to take the property to the next level from an expansion standpoint, so it was really trying to get your head around the building as it stood, and then what future iterations would potentially look like. My goal with any expansion is that when it’s completed and somebody was to come for the first time, they would think it was built that way from day one—seamless.

How supportive was the tribe of your ideas?

They were absolutely supportive. I’ve worked commercial casinos, private casinos, other tribal operations, and I can tell you they are a very, very thoughtful tribe. They think through things at length. From the beginning it was a very collaborative process in the sense of sharing some of my ideas and thoughts and explaining to them why I thought that this would be the way to go in a particular expansion or venue that we were considering. They listened, and I think in every instance they agreed to go forward. They see the business argument for it, but sometimes it was a leap of faith.

Most of what you’ve done is on the non-gaming side. Why was that so important?

We did the expansion with a real emphasis on non-gaming amenities, and that’s a broad term. It means a lot of different things, but primarily we were short in terms of restaurant capacity. Prior to expansion we had our three-meal restaurant, a buffet and a very small quick-serve type outlet. We just did not have enough seats and did not have the ability to produce enough covers. So it was really about addressing several different things at the same time.

Let’s talk about the Wawyé Oasis. It’s an incredible enclosed pool. We’ve seen it in a couple of properties in the industry, but you took it to the next level. Explain where you got the concept from, and how it was conceived and why you chose HBG to help you design it.

As an operator, you’re always looking to, at a minimum, be on a level playing field with your competition. Ideally you want to have a market differentiator. So as we were thinking through what phase five was going to look like, obviously one of the components was going to be a hotel, but what else were we going to offer besides additional casino offering and food and beverage?

I had been at the East Coast Gaming Congress in Atlantic City, and it was held at Harrah’s for the longest time. They had a hospitality function in the enclosed Harrah’s pool there. And I thought, “Wouldn’t this be awesome in Michigan?”

There’s nothing like winters in Michigan, and you don’t have pool parties in the winter. So we kicked it around at a real high thought level. Could it be some kind of retractable roof? It just wasn’t feasible. We brought in HBG and they did their best to make that space evolve. They put a stage in, they added additional bars, space for banquets, the advent of day life/nightlife and pool parties, to increase the utility value of the space.

It was more than just a pool during the day. So we built a true dome and the hotel and added 20,000 square feet of event space. They penciled out very well. The one that penciled the best was the hotel and dome, but the original idea of the dome did not give me the ability to do banquets that I get in the 20,000-square-foot event space, or to do a concert for about 2,000 people, which is the sweet spot in our market.

What will this do for the Gun Lake appeal in the market?

I firmly expect to get business from Detroit, northwest Indiana and Illinois—people looking to go someplace different. Right now some of our guests are loyal to us, but we’ve been limited in terms of what we’ve been able to provide them. Now, I can see a show, a concert, and have a great evening. So I firmly expect that folks will drive past other properties that don’t have the Wawyé Oasis, because now we’re beginning to offer them something that they can’t get in their backyard, and yet it’s still within a reasonable drive. This changes our market and our positioning dramatically.