Bauer Interiors News

The Big M Casino, Inc of Fort Myers, Fla., has awarded a contract to Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Panama City, Florida to construct a casino vessel. The as yet unnamed vessel will join the existing vessel, Royal Gambler, in providing offshore casino services to the Fort Myers market. The vessel was designed by John W. Gilbert and Associates, a prominent naval architect firm located in Hingham, Massachusetts. The interior design will be performed by Bauer Interiors of New Orleans, Louisiana.Bauer Interiors is one of the best-known companies in design, traffic and ergonomics of casino vessels. The vessel is 186 ft. long with a beam of 38 ft. and a molded depth of 11.5 ft., and depending on conditions, will have a loaded draft of 8 ft. She will accommodate 600 passengers plus a crew of 72.

Fred Hall was elected PVA 2002 President on Tuesday, February 19 during the PVA Annual Convention at MariTrends 2002 in Biloxi, Miss. Hall is Vice President and General Manager of the Bridgeport and Port Jefferson Steamboat Company, Port Jefferson, N.Y., a provider of ferry service across the Long Island Sound. This ferry service has been in business since 1883 and now operates three 100-vehicle/1000-passenger vessels. Prior to being elected PVA President, Hall has served as PVA Vice-President, PVA Secretary-Treasurer and co-chairman of the PVA Legislative Committee. He was also a founding member and a past chairman of the PVA Ferry Council.

As the casino riverboat industry celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, there's little resemblance between the first reproduction 1890s paddlewheelers that a decade ago plied the upper Mississippi River in Iowa and today's luxurious floating casino resort complexes with their plethora of amenities. Pinnacle Entertainment's $200 million Belterra Casino Resort in Belterra, Ind., which opened last Oct. 27, epitomizes this trend. The Belterra coincidentally and unintentionally also pays tribute to the industry's hallmark 10th anniversary - which is traditionally celebrated with a gift of aluminum or tin - through use of an innovative technique.

When commercial designer Bauer Interiors hired the architectural firm of Landry and Lewis in Hattiesburg, Miss. to provide interior drawings of Horseshoe Casino's new riverboat, King of the Red, in Bossier City, La., they knew the draftsman would use computer-aided-design (CAD) graphics. Therefore, the company expected more than the usual hand-drawn renderings for the 275-ft.-long riverboat Horseshoe intended to replace its smaller Queen of the Red. What they didn't count on getting were computer renderings so faithful to reality that when they are placed next to actual photographs of the finished interior, it's difficult to tell the difference.

R/B River Explorer, which carries 198 passengers on two interlinked 295-ft. long barges, traverses the Mississippi River and Intracoastal Waterway on fout-to-ten day excursions. With interiors designed by Bauer Interiors, convertability was the prime directive throughout much of the vessel to allow a multitude of uses within a single space. In the lobby area, each etched glass partition between the two-man booths is an engraving of a major bridge spanning the Mississippi River from Ohio to New Orleans. The interior of the Sprague Theater is outfitted to resemble the interior of the vessel by the same name, the largest cargo-carrying towboat on the Mississippi River in the 19th Century.