Jackpot: Builder scores with $750M casino project

Tasked with a nearly complete makeover of the resort, Suffolk-Yates faced a tall order from the owner: Keep the slot machines humming — and money rolling — during the project.

By Brian Hartz
| 6:00 a.m. January 31, 2020
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Mark Wemple. Suffolk Vice President of Operations Brian Eaton led a multi-year, $750 million expansion project at the Seminole Hard Rock Resort & Casino in Tampa.

Tampa Bay-Lakeland

If the King was alive today — and some say he is — he’d likely be pleased with the extensive upgrades to the Seminole Hard Rock Resort & Casino in Tampa, officially unveiled in October.

The showpiece of the $750 million expansion project, led by Miami-based builder Suffolk-Yates LLC and designed by New York-based Wimberly Interiors and Las Vegas-based Klai Juba Wald Architecture, is undoubtedly the new atrium entry. Its features include a massive, domed skylight ceiling; a 15,000-pound, Italian-made chandelier; twin curved escalators; and the pièce de résistance, a 24-karat gold grand piano that Elvis Presley bought for his mother but then kept at Graceland after her death in 1958.