The Casino at Lakemont Park is closing in early July.

The banquet venue, along with its catering service Snappy Chef, is ending a 33-year tenure as tenant at the historic 135-year-old building owned by the county and operated by landlord Lakemont Partnership, due to ongoing financial struggles — including high debt, according to owner Doug Simon, who made the announcement Wednesday.

It might not be happening if the county commissioners had acceded to Simon’s repeated pleas for a share of the county bed tax, for which The Casino would have been eligible, because of its location on county property — and which would have helped make his firm’s competition with the Blair County Convention Center more even, given that facility has been getting more than $200,000 in annual bed tax revenue, Simon said.

Simon and the Lakemont Partnership have started reaching out in hopes of attracting another operator for the Casino building, and he would be willing to help such a buyer get started, Simon said.

Some “seasoned” Pennsylvania-based prospects have looked at the site, according to partnership President Andrea Cohen.

“It’s a turnkey business” — with everything immediately available, including the fully appointed banquet rooms, the fully equipped kitchen and his “book” of repeat banquet and catering clients, Simon said.

“We’re looking for someone willing to buy us out of all the assets,” he said.

That purchase money would go toward paying down his debt to the Small Business Administration, with which he previously consolidated loans he’d taken to expand and improve the facility.

He borrowed $2 million in the late 1990s and $500,000 later.

He still owes “a lot,” he said.

It’s uncertain whether a new operator’s asset purchase would be enough to “get me off the hook” with the SBA, “but it would certainly help,” Simon said.

Over the last year and a half, Simon has made a “compelling argument” for a share of the bed tax, said Commissioners Chairman Dave Kessling, who has been in office during that period.

Simon’s case is one of the reasons the commissioners have taken steps recently to decertify Explore Altoona as the county’s tourist promotion agency, which will give the commissioners the ability to change how the bed tax is distributed, Kessling said.

“Apologies to him that we haven’t moved fast enough,” Kessling said. “But at least we heard his cry.”

It would have helped if the county could have allocated $70,000 to $125,000 a year from the bed tax, Simon said.

Simon’s argument for a share of the bed tax is especially convincing when considering that the Altoona Curve — a private organization that operates on county property like Simon’s DJS Food Designs — received bed tax money to retire debt incurred some years ago to improve the ballpark, according to Kessling.

Simon has invested personally in the Casino building to “expand, renovate, repair and maintain this continuously aging structure,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

As a partnership tenant on property owned by the county, those investments didn’t translate into ownership of the improvements, he said.

But he owns the debt thus incurred, he said.

Simon had hoped during COVID to be able to expunge his debt through the Restaurant Revitalization Fund program, he said.

But the program ran out of funds before he could get any of them, he said.

Had it been otherwise, “we might not have been in the situation we’re in today,” he said.

While The Casino’s financial struggles have been acute over the last decade, there were setbacks starting much earlier.

Those were triggered by financial crises caused by 9/11, the 2008 housing bubble bursting, the 2012 European debt crisis and COVID, he said.

Simon’s landlord — The Lakemont Partnership — was “surprised and saddened” by the announcement, Cohen said.

The commissioners likewise are saddened that the iconic venue would be closing, Kessling said.

They’re also concerned about what will happen with the building, he said.

It’s the responsibility of the partnership to find a new tenant, he said.

“Are they going to be able to put a venue back into that space that will fill the niche that Doug Simon has filled for many years,” Kessling asked rhetorically.

History

Simon was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised on Long Island.

He got the bug for food service work at the age of 15 while working at a catering firm near his home.

He went to Emory University in Atlanta, then after college worked in a restaurant in that city where chefs told him, “Kid, you’ve got what it takes,” he said.

That led him to enroll in culinary school in Rhode Island.

After graduating as a chef, he worked in Washington, D.C., then in New York City.

Having married Sue Port from Altoona — they met through their mothers — and with Sue wanting to come home, Simon took advantage of the opportunity to take over The Casino, at the suggestion of his then-father-in-law, Neil Port (Doug and Sue are no longer married).

“I’ve loved being here,” Simon said.

He regrets having so much debt, but doesn’t know if he could have done things differently, he said.

There’s a saying that it’s sensible to make your inevitable professional mistakes “on someone else’s dime,” he said.

“I made too many mistakes on my own dime,” he said.

Still, “emotionally, I’m in a good place,” he said.

He gave it his all at The Casino, he said.

That included an unsustainable run of 21 consecutive 12-hour days during the most recent winter holiday season, he said.

At 62, he has some irons in the fire for his life post-Casino, he said.

He’s also looking forward to his wife Nancy Kenney’s semi-retirement as a hospitalist from UPMC Altoona in August.

Rumors rebutted

After the announcement of the impending closure of The Casino, there were Facebook comments on the Mirror’s initial story speculating that the park as a whole may be on the verge of shutting down.

“That is 100 percent false,” Cohen said.

The park is functioning with “an active and vibrant” business office complex, along with batting cages, two mini-golf courses, pavilions and lawns; plus many events scheduled for the summer, then Holiday Lights on the Lake — along with Galactic Ice, she said.

That doesn’t mean everything is ideal.

The partnership is “working with the county to come up with a plan for the future,” Cohen said. “If (the park) is to evolve from what it is today,” she added.

The commissioners are concerned that the partnership is not doing much “inside the fence” where the former, historic amusement park is located, Kessling said — while observing that the partnership is maintaining operations “outside of the fence that makes them money.”

The swimming pool and roller coaster inside the fence are in disrepair and there are questions about what will happen with those, Kessling said.

The issues with what is inside the fence has resulted in the parties taking sides on the master lease, which runs until 2066.

Under that lease, which flowed from the conveyance of the park ground from the Baker Estate to the county, there must be a park, and it must be open to the public, according to Kessling.

According to the partnership, the batting cages, mini golf and similar attractions qualify the ground as a park, he said.

The county’s understanding, however, is that the ground should include amusement rides, like it had in its heyday, he said.

The commissioners understand that such rides are costly to maintain and that insurance is expensive, Kessling said.

“But we can’t not do anything,” he said. “Neither side wants to see the park deteriorate.”

More discussions are planned, he said.