Editor's Choice for Best Casino Among Competitors

Horseshoe Casino

For 14 years, Hammond’s riverboat casino has consistently set the standard in Northwest whether the measure is revenue, number of visitors to the property or, in 2008, overwhelming physical size. Horseshoe’s recent expansion project cost $485 million and tripled the space of its ancestor to 175,000 square feet. While the main gaming level is the length of two football fields, the second floor of the modular structure is a multi-use entertainment complex flexible enough to host everything from concerts to boxing tournaments to conventions or even just a very, very big Super Bowl party.

If you ask Horseshoe Indiana Regional President and General Manager Rick Mazer (who is also responsible for Harrah’s Horseshoe South property in Elizabeth, Indiana) how the Hammond casino stays so consistently successful he will give you reasons like location, access to a vital and growing market, the habits of good corporate citizenship, a strong parent company and the best workforce in the country.

Ask anyone else about Horseshoe’s success and they will tell you the company’s owes it all to the heart and soul of Rick Mazer, the first employee hired at the Hammond operation as general manager in 1995. Though there have been two ownership changes since Horseshoe opened and Mazer has stayed at the helm and shaped Horseshoe as well as the development of the industry in Indiana during that time. For Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. imagining the city without Mazer is akin to Bedford Falls minus George Bailey. And $30 million in annual tax revenue is just the beginning: “We split it off—70 percent goes into infrastructure and 30 percent ends up in special projects like the baseball field,” the Mayor explains. “Basically, if you see something new built in Hammond, Horseshoe’s had a part in it.”