Next time you\u2019re driving the Grapevine and nearing the forest of oil rigs on the outskirts of Bakersfield, look for a six-story guitar. <\/p>\n
That would be the Hard Rock Casino Tejon, whose opening on Thursday brings industrial-strength Indian gaming \u2014 and some Hollywood pizzazz \u2014 to a territory better known for cowboy hats, farmland and petroleum extraction.<\/p>\n
The Tejon casino stands in the rural community of Mettler, near the convergence of Interstate 5 and State Route 99 \u2014 \u201ca stone\u2019s throw away\u201d from Los Angeles, suggested Hard Rock Casino Tejon President Chris Kelley.<\/p>\n
In effect, the casino is a $600-million bet by leaders of Hard Rock International and the Tejon Indian Tribe that they can grab a central role among the many Indian casinos in Southern California. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The property is the first full-scale gaming and entertainment destination in Kern County.<\/p>\n
(Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A wind sculpture at the entrance of the casino. <\/p>\n
(Cristian Costea for Hard Rock International)<\/p>\n
The draw? Most notably, 150,000 square feet of gaming space \u2014 including 58 table games and more than 2,000 slot machines \u2014 putting it among the largest casinos in Southern California, on par with many along the Strip in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n
And, of course, because this is a Hard Rock venture, there are pop music artifacts on display. Among them: the blue hooded velvet mini dress Sabrina Carpenter wore in her \u201cPlease Please Please\u201d music video, signed guitars from Sheryl Crow and Bonnie Raitt, Beck\u2019s tambourine and Natalie Cole\u2019s orange high heels. <\/p>\n
The casino also includes four restaurants serving Asian street food, tacos, pizza and American comfort food (especially Nashville hot chicken) \u2014 and a bonus feature. At select hours, Kelley said, staff will put up a divider to create Deep Cut, a fancier \u201cspeakeasy restaurant\u201d that will emphasize steak and seafood.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something no other Hard Rock Cafe has … a restaurant within a restaurant,\u201d said Kelley, leading a tour in the days before opening. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Live-action table games include blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat. <\/p>\n
(Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)<\/p>\n
Plans for the second phase of the project will include a 400-room hotel and spa on-site, along with a 2,800-seat Hard Rock Live venue designed to host concerts, sporting events and ultimately make Kern County a premier destination for travelers and fans. Officials declined to share a timeline for this next installment. <\/p>\n
Though its global empire began with a London cafe in 1971, Hard Rock International has been owned by the Seminole Tribe of Florida since 2007. The company\u2019s native ownership was \u201ca major influence\u201d on the Tejon tribe\u2019s decision to team up, said Tejon Tribal Chairman Octavio Escobedo III. Hard Rock Casino Tejon is owned by the Tejon Indian Tribe and is managed by Hard Rock International.<\/p>\n
For the Tejon tribe and its 1,523 enrolled members, the casino amounts to a new chapter in a saga full of challenges. In the 1850s, the Tejon were included in the creation of California\u2019s first Indian reservation<\/a> \u2014 which was then closed by federal officials in the 1860s. More than a century later, in 1979, the tribe was omitted<\/a> from a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs list of formally recognized tribes \u2014 an apparent mistake that took decades to correct. <\/p>\n When the Tejon did win federal recognition in late 2011, gaming plans materialized quickly. By late 2016, the tribe had set in motion<\/a> the acquisition of the casino site.<\/p>\n The restaurant Deep Cut is billed as an \u201celevated steakhouse experience.\u201d <\/p>\n (Makenzie Beeney Photography for Hard Rock International)<\/p>\n For the tribe, Escobedo said, the long-term picture likely includes developing a residential community \u2014 which the Tejon haven\u2019t had for more than a century \u2014 as the tribe aims for \u201cfinancial sovereignty.\u201d Though he declined to specify the amount of money that would require, he did say \u201cit\u2019s going to take a tremendous amount of financial discipline to achieve that.\u201d <\/p>\n So far, things feel promising. Escobedo said 52 tribal members have signed on to work at casino jobs and \u201cI\u2019d love to see that number double over the next year or so.\u201d <\/p>\n Long before the Seminoles bought control of Hard Rock International, the tribe pioneered Indian gaming in the U.S., beginning with a bingo hall in Hollywood, Fla., in 1979. Through further investment and legal victories rooted in tribal sovereignty, tribes in 29 states across the U.S. have built hundreds of gaming operations, which together gross more than $40 billion yearly.<\/a><\/p>\n Beyond its possibilities for the Tejon tribe, the arrival of the casino means about 1,100 new jobs for greater Bakersfield, which lost a beloved entertainment venue in August when Buck Owens\u2019 Crystal Palace closed after 29 years. <\/p>\n Owens, who died in 2006, was a longtime resident of Bakersfield and proponent of the gritty \u201cBakersfield sound\u201d in country music. Besides artifacts from pop music, rock \u2019n\u2019 roll and Tejon cultural history, Kelley said, \u201cWe are going to have some Buck Owens memorabilia. It just wouldn\u2019t be right not to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next time you\u2019re driving the Grapevine and nearing the forest of oil rigs on the outskirts of Bakersfield,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,7,1501,31737,1513,1503,33008,33010,33007,1502,33009,1457,33006,1505,22002],"class_list":{"0":"post-51789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-casino","13":"tag-escobedo","14":"tag-hard-rock-casino-tejon","15":"tag-hard-rock-international","16":"tag-hollywood-pizzazz","17":"tag-industrial-strength-indian-gaming","18":"tag-kelley","19":"tag-opening","20":"tag-pop-music-artifact","21":"tag-restaurant","22":"tag-seminole-tribe","23":"tag-tejon-indian-tribe","24":"tag-u-s-bureau"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n