Live! Casino resort tops out in Petersburg and names its first three restaurants
The permanent resort is scheduled for late 2027 with 200 hotel rooms, an event center of roughly 70,000 square feet and 20 food, beverage and entertainment spaces. Sports & Social, The Prime Rib and Luk Fu are the first concepts named.
The developers of Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia have raised the final commemorative beam on the Petersburg resort and identified the first three restaurant concepts planned for its late-2027 opening.
The Cordish Companies and Bruce Smith Enterprise held the topping-out ceremony October 8. The milestone signals that the project’s structural frame has reached its planned height, although substantial enclosure, interior construction, licensing and hiring work remains.
The permanent resort will contain more than 445,000 square feet of gaming, hotel and hospitality space at Wagner Road and Interstate 95. Plans call for a 200-room hotel, resort pool, spa, fitness center and a multipurpose event center of approximately 70,000 square feet.
The developers say the property will contain 20 dining, beverage and entertainment spaces. The first announced concepts are Sports & Social, The Prime Rib and Luk Fu.
Three established Cordish concepts
Sports & Social will occupy 8,000 square feet and center on an LED screen spanning 82 feet wide and 14 feet tall, capable of showing multiple games at once. The restaurant and bar will serve made-from-scratch game-day food, cocktails including the company’s signature Crush selection, and national and local beer, and will host watch parties and other programmed events. Cordish operates the concept in 18 locations nationwide.
The Prime Rib will provide the resort’s fine-dining offer, built around steaks, its namesake prime rib, filet mignon, ribeye, porterhouse and New York strip, alongside jumbo lump crab cakes and seafood including Chilean sea bass, ahi tuna and salmon. The developers say the concept received a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2026 but did not specify which of its existing locations earned it. The Prime Rib operates in Washington, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Louisiana.
Luk Fu will serve a Pan-Asian menu of sushi, wok-fired specialties, noodle dishes and traditional soups drawing on Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Japanese cooking, which the developers say will be built on locally grown produce, poultry, seafood and meats. Casino Player Magazine named the concept Best Asian and Best Sushi in its 2025 dining awards. Beth Bloom Designs is designing both Luk Fu and The Prime Rib for the Petersburg property.
These are house concepts with operating histories at other Cordish developments, which reduces development risk and gives the company direct control over three anchor restaurants. It also means the most important unanswered food-and-beverage question concerns the remaining spaces.
The developers said additional restaurants and bars, including local hospitality partnerships, will be announced during the year leading to opening. For Petersburg and Richmond-area operators, those partnerships could range from licensed brands and chef collaborations to vendor relationships or independently operated leases.
A hotel and events demand generator
The resort’s hospitality impact extends beyond casino traffic. A 200-room hotel and an event center of roughly 70,000 square feet will compete for meetings, entertainment, weddings and group business along the Interstate 95 corridor.
The event center is planned for concerts, conventions, nonprofit functions and social gatherings. That space, combined with the hotel and restaurants, could create demand the temporary casino cannot serve. It may also shift room-night and banquet competition across Petersburg, Colonial Heights and the southern Richmond market.
The gaming floor is planned with more than 1,600 slot machines, more than 70 live-action table games including a 35-table poker room, and a sportsbook. The developers describe the poker tables as part of the 70-plus count rather than in addition to it, and have not released a separate figure for non-poker tables. The permanent project is being built on the same site as the temporary Live! Casino Virginia, which opened in January 2026 with about 900 slot machines and more than 30 table games.
The temporary casino has created more than 600 permanent jobs, including more than 100 table games dealer positions, according to the developers. The permanent resort is expected to add about 1,000 more, across gaming, hotel services, culinary, guest services, events, hospitality sales, security, surveillance, facilities and finance. The developers put total permanent employment at about 1,600.
For the regional labor market, the scale matters. The new restaurants alone will require cooks, servers, bartenders, hosts, managers and support staff. The event center and hotel will add banquet, housekeeping, front-desk, sales and engineering demand at the same time.
Large projections need context
Cordish and Bruce Smith Enterprise project that over its first 10 years the resort will generate $2.8 billion in economic stimulus to the region and $504 million in tax revenue, including $240 million for the City of Petersburg. They also project $802 million in economic benefits during construction and $201 million in annual economic benefits after opening.
Those figures are developer projections, not revenue guarantees. Actual performance will depend on the opening schedule, gaming demand, hotel occupancy, food-and-beverage sales, entertainment programming and the competitive response from Virginia’s other casinos and hotels.
The company is also building its supplier network. A local contractor and vendor fair was held October 14 at the Petersburg Public Library, in partnership with the Virginia Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity, with procurement categories including food and beverage, hotel and spa products and services, facilities and maintenance, printing and signage, professional services, and construction and subcontractor services.
The next significant hospitality disclosures should be the remaining restaurant operators, banquet capacity, room mix, opening-phase staffing plan and local purchasing targets. The project has now moved beyond a casino construction story. With restaurants, a hotel, a resort pool, a spa and one of the region’s largest new event venues, it is becoming a major competitive entrant in Central Virginia hospitality.
