SugarHouse adds finishing touches before opening Sept. 23

It is not faint praise to say that the most striking aspect of the interior of the soon-to-open SugarHouse Casino is the spectacularly inventive use of the exceedingly tight 45,000 square feet.

The colors (red, turquoise, and gold) are vivid, the ambience clean and relaxing, and the patterned ceiling origami-like. Walls are oddly but pleasantly angled. But in a space about one-fourth the size of a typical full-service casino, SugarHouse squeezes in 1,602 slot machines and 40 table games and makes it stylish, not cramped.

It even manages a 3,000-square-foot high-limit area with a glass-enclosed lounge for VIPs.

Philadelphia's first casino and the state's 10th opens on the Delaware River waterfront Sept. 23, nearly four years after it was awarded a slots license by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

The project, stalled by legal battles, political wrangling, and community opposition that hasn't completely died down, is nearing showtime, and the finishing touches seem endless.

"We're making decisions quicker these last few weeks," SugarHouse general manager Wendy Hamilton said during a tour of the casino Wednesday afternoon. "Time is moving astonishingly fast."

The new casino doesn't flee from its gritty industrial setting, but celebrates it.

Built on the site of the old Jack Frost Sugar refinery, the interior features "sugar-stick" art - bundled sticks of sugar that hang from the ceiling - a main restaurant called the Refinery, and a grab-and-go eatery named Jack's. There's even a sports bar, Lucky Red, where workers installed wood-laminate flooring this week.

Interior designer Florence "Floss" Barber, based in Center City, worked with Cope Linder Architects to create the look.

"We used the city of Philadelphia as inspiration in creating a series of 'neighborhoods' to divide the room," Barber said. "Because of its urban and riverfront environment, the typical casino interior needed to be reinvented for SugarHouse and updated for a new generation."

At $385 million, SugarHouse will be less than half the cost and a third the size of Rivers Casino, which sits on Pittsburgh's waterfront. Neil Bluhm, the Chicago billionaire developer of Rivers, is responsible for SugarHouse. Barber was the designer for Rivers, and Keating Building Corp. was the contractor for both.