If approved, this would be the third casino site in about two miles of the beach. The 3.93 acre property is east of Silver Slipper Casino and adjacent to a 98.5-acre site owned by Cure Land Co. that got site approval but hasn’t yet been built. The sites are just west of Buccaneer State Park.

Another South Beach Casino was proposed in 2008 at Veterans Avenue and U.S. 90 in Biloxi and went before the Gaming Commission several times for site approval. Kirk Ladner of Diamondhead and Russell Elliott of Bay St. Louis are requesting site approval of this Hancock County property.

“They’ve met all the regulations to get on the agenda,” said Jay McDaniel, executive director of the Gaming Commission.

The required legal advertisement in the Sea Coast Echo says South Beach Casino & Resort LLC anticipates the resort will have 40,000 square feet of casino space, 1,100 slot machines, 25 table games and 6 poker tables.

The Gaming Commission requires all new casinos on the Coast to have 300 hotel rooms, at least 40,000 square feet of casino space, a fine dining restaurant and an amenity designed to offer something that will grow the local casino market.

This request for site approval is just the first step toward building a casino at the site, McDaniel said.

The developers would next have to apply for approval to proceed, a rigorous process that would require them to show they have the funding to complete the casino and get all the required amenities on the compact site.

South Mississippi has 12 casinos across Harrison and Hancock counties, and several more are proposed in Biloxi, D’Iberville and Long Beach.

There would be twice that many on the Coast, but more than 20 casino developers who got site approval since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 haven’t been able to pull together the financing to build their casino resorts.

By Mary Perez