Mystic Lake hotel expansion to be done for New Year's Eve

Prior Lake American

Mystic Lake Hotel Casino's new hotel expansion won't even open until New Year's Eve, but it's already booked up for Super Bowl weekend in February. 

The expansion, called Mystic Lake Center, began last year and the owners are so confident in this date that a corporate event has already been booked for Jan. 2.

"It's being warmly received by the marketplace, I'm happy to report," said Thomas Polusny, executive vice president of operations for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Gaming Enterprise. The casino is owned by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community.

The 70,000 square-foot-center will be used for meetings and events like conferences, weddings and more.

"We, at the gaming enterprise, are excited this is going to be a destination of world-class entertainment and event experiences," Polusny said.

Once the center is done, an additional 120 permanent jobs will be added, Polusny said.

Exactly 180 rooms will be added, including 18 suites, bringing the totel number of hotel rooms at Mystic Lake Hotel Casino to 766, making it the second largest hotel in the Twin Cities area.

The center will feature three large ballrooms that can be split into smaller areas, meeting rooms and an executive conference room with views of the golf course and meadows.

The hotel tower is nine stories and each room features a view of the golf course.

The design of the center and each space is inspired by natural scenes in Minnesota, such as flowing rivers, frozen lakes or prairie grasslands. Chandeliers will feature blue acrylic to mimic a water droplet.

"It really speaks to the thoughtfulness of nature and mother Earth throughout the entire space," Mystic Lake Hotel Casino Group Sales Manager Holland Tudor said. "It gives you a sense you're really in a resort as opposed to a convention center."

The larger spaces will also feature SageGlass, a technological glass that when electrified, can filter sunlight in specific ways without blinds or shades. This means the center can allow sunlight when it's cold and block it when it's hot without obscuring the view, allowing for more efficient heating and cooling of the space.

Mystic Lake Hotel Casino was already planning on doing an expansion but decided to try to finish before the Super Bowl in order to attract football fans, Polusny said.

"We would have done this regardless of the Super Bowl or not, we just said 'Let's see if we can get this done and put it on the fast track,' " Polusny said.

The meeting and convention areas will feature a number of technological hookups that can be controlled with only an iPad, including a projector that's not even on the open market yet, Tudor said.

"We really have a state-of-the-art technology in the new space," Tudor said. "It's all programmed with an iPad and just a touch. It's really kind of next gen technology you don't have anywhere else in the Twin Cities area."

Mystic Lake Hotel Casino is keeping the cost of the expansion private at this time, Polusny said.