BILOXI, Ms. – After being buffeted by hurricane winds in 2005, this Gulf Coast city is about to be buffeted again, but this time it will be a positive occurrence.
Famed singer Jimmy Buffett is building a huge new restaurant-casino complex in East Biloxi, with a mid-2012 projected opening date.
The 68,000 square foot facility, to be named Margaritaville and with a Caribbean-like atmosphere, naturally, will bring full circle to Biloxi’s recovery from the disastrous Hurricane Katrina. The $48 million casino, a joint project with the sprawling Harrah’s chain, will be Biloxi’s 12th casino – the same number the city had before Hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed much of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The $48 million first phase will create 28,000 square feet of casino space and will have 750 slot machines and 18 table games. The restaurant and bar will seat 290 indoors and on the outdoor dining deck overlooking the Back Bay, plus 60 more on a second level. The 17,000-square-foot events center will have seating for about 780.
The Biloxi location is perhaps fitting inasmuch as the city was the first location Buffett was ever paid to perform as a singer.
The Buffett brand continues to expand, with the Las Vegas Margaritaville at the Flamingo expanding to include its very own branded casino, which will be located adjacent to the existing Margaritaville Café and a Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Casino and Hotel to be built east of Shreveport, LA in neighboring Bossier City. The complex, a $170 million, 400-room resort, will include an 18- to 20-story hotel tower, 1,000-seat entertainment complex with a VIP balcony and an outdoor tropical area visible to the north from the Louisiana Boardwalk.
The latest Biloxi casino to rebuild or upgrade is The Palace, going through a multi-million renovation in 2011 and reopening as the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s only smoke-free facility.
Located on the Gulf of Mexico and Biloxi’s Back Bay, the 9-story resort offers immaculate hotel rooms and suites with stunning views, award winning restaurants (including the requisite buffet and a four-star restaurant), non-stop gaming, championship golf at The Preserve Golf Club and amazing amenities (including free local transportation). The Palace has more than 1,000 slot machines and two dozen table games (sorry, no poker room, however).
The Palace Contact Lounge & Sports Bar is located at the farthest end of the gaming floor. The venue features 165 seats, a video poker bar, high definition and projection televisions for viewing of sporting events, and a stage for live entertainment and other casino events and is open 24 hours per day.
The interior of the new casino, restaurants and lounge is smoke free. Smoking will be allowed outside the main building, and a new $1 million smoking lounge has been created to accommodate smokers. The smoking lounge is conveniently located in close proximity to the gaming floor, restaurants and lounge/sports bar. It features comfortable furnishings, flat-screen televisions and its own air conditioning and heating system.
For more information on The Palace visit www.PalaceCasinoResort.com or call 800-Palace9 (800-725-2239).
The Biloxi recovery is something of a miracle as Hurricane Katrina unleashed hurricane force winds for 17 hours along the coast, destroying thousands of buildings on the coast and thousands more up to six miles inland.
On August 29, 2005, the Mississippi Gulf Coast changed forever when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the area, creating a storm surge that exceeded 35 feet and inundated the coastline from Pascagoula west to Waveland and overran all of the Coast's casinos inflicting catastrophic damages to beachfront and inland businesses and homes, causing more than 100 deaths.
Mayor A.J. Holloway said, "This was our tsunami." Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said the destruction looked “like an American Hiroshima.” In a national TV interview Barbour said 90 per cent of the buildings along the coast in Biloxi and neighboring Gulfport had been destroyed.
Before Katrina, the Grand Casino was on a barge, docked off the beach, south of Highway 90. The storm surge lifted the casino barge out of the water, over the beach and over the highway. The same thing happened to two other casino barges—the President Casino in Biloxi, which landed on top of a Holiday Inn, and the Gulfport Grand Casino.
Scores of hurricanes have hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but the most destructive, as measured by storm surge levels in the Biloxi Lighthouse, occurred in 1855, 1906, 1909, 1947, 1969 (Hurricane Camille), and 2005 (Hurricane Katrina).
Visitors to Biloxi also might want to take a look at the lighthouse there.
The Biloxi Lighthouse was built in 1848 and was one of the first cast-iron lighthouses in the South. It is the city's signature landmark and has become a post-Katrina symbol of the city's resolve and resilience.
The lighthouse is notable for its several female lightkeepers, including Maria Younghans, who tended the facility for 53 years. After being declared surplus property in 1968, the Biloxi Lighthouse was deeded to the city of Biloxi, which eventually opened it to public tours.
The lighthouse has withstood many storms over the years. Katrina's storm surge covered a third of the 64-foot tall lighthouse, and the constant pounding from the water and winds toppled many bricks that lined the interior of the cast iron tower. The storm’s winds also broke many of the windows in the light cupola and destroyed the structure's electrical system

In March 2010, the city re-opened the lighthouse to public tours after a 14-month, $400,000 restoration that was federally-funded. The lighthouse is open daily for public tours, where visitors can get great views of the coastal area.
A tremendous amount of rebuilding and restoration has been underway on the Coast since Katrina. The area's highways and bridges have been completely rebuilt and many homes and amenities have returned or are brand new. Shopping venues have also been revived with a completely restored Edgewater Mall in Biloxi, new restaurants and the new Promenade Shopping Center.
The area's casinos now include The Palace and The Beau Rivage Resort & Casino, Biloxi Grand, the IP, the Isle, Boomtown, Hard Rock and Treasure Bay, Gulfport's Island View Casino (formerly the Gulfport Grand) the Hollywood Casino and the Silver Slipper.
The Gulf Coast area now ranks as the biggest casino district between Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Several of the casinos offer entertainment areas, with top talent appearing regularly.
Several of the casinos, such as The Palace, operate their own golf courses and can arrange for golf for guests.
The Gulf Coast had always been a popular fishing area and that phase has also seen a major comeback, with dozens of fishing excursion firms in operation, though the oyster industry has not yet made a full recovery – hampered by the hurricane and then the BP oil spill. Experts say about 85 per cent of the area’s barrier reefs were destroyed.
The oil spill problem has been greatly resolved along the Gulf Coast, with very little evidence of any remaining oil problems. The 26 mile stretch of Highway 90 offers many white sand beaches with lots of turnoffs right along the ocean. But the beaches in recent years have never much more than an insignificant tourist attraction, perhaps based in part on misleading and inaccurate oil spill information.
Like most Gulf Coast communities, the Biloxi area has a wealth of great seafood restaurants. One we visited and found to be top-notch was the Half Shell Oyster House. The restaurant ranked No. 1 in a customer survey by the Urbanspoon web site. The Top 10 seafood restaurants in the Biloxi area, according to Urbanspoon (approval rating, costs in parenthesis).
1. Half Shell Oyster House (86% $$$) Gulfport - Sandwiches/Subs, Seafood, Steakhouse 2500 13th Street.
2. Shady's New World Cuisine (83% $$) Biloxi - Seafood, Thai, Cajun/Creole 1795 Pass Rd.
3. Old Cuevas Bistro (92% $$$) Long Beach - Sandwiches/Subs, Seafood, Soups 5331 Menge Ave.
4. Vrazel's Fine Food... (83% $$$) Gulfport - American, Seafood 3206 W Beach Blvd.
5. Samurai (82% $$) Gulfport - Japanese, Seafood, Sushi 2511 25th Ave.
6. Harbor View Cafe (87% $$) Long Beach - Sandwiches/Subs, Seafood, Cajun/Creole 504 Jeff Davis Ave.
7. Mary Mahoney's Old French...( 74% $$$$) Biloxi - French, Seafood 116 Rue Magnolia.
8. Jourdan River Steamer (85% $$$$) Kiln - Seafood 15152 Highway 603.
9. Shaggy's Harbor Bar & Grill (81% $$) Pass Christian - Burgers, Sandwiches/Subs, Seafood 120 S. Hiern Ave., Pass Harbor.
10. Back Bay (82%, $$) Gulfport - Burgers, Seafood, Vegetarian 1458 Magnolia St.
Others in the top 20 include Blow Fly Inn, Ole Biloxi Fillin Station, Bacchus Food & Drink, Trapani's Eatery, B B's Po-Boys, Taranto's, BB's Bar-B-Que & Snak Shak, Bonefish Grill, Shaw's Fish House.
Soon to be another major Biloxi area tourist attraction is the Infinity project.

Infinity at NASA Stennis Space Center, a new state-of-the- art science center and visitor attraction is being built near the Interstate 10 entrance to NASA Stennis Space Center, off Interstate 10 some 35 miles west of Biloxi, near the Mississippi Welcome Center.
Visitors of all ages will be able to hands-on explore our earth, oceans and space through the work of the scientists, engineers and pioneers at work every day at NASA Stennis Space Center.
The $35 million, 60,000 square-foot facility is expected to open in 2012. In a study conducted by Harrison Price Company, a firm that specializes in recreation market analysis, INFINITY at NASA Stennis Space Center is expected to draw 260,000 to 362,000 visitors per year.
. The history of Biloxi spans more than 300 years.
Long before French explorer Pierre LeMoyne d’Iberville discovered Biloxi in 1699, the Native Americans lived there. A tribe called Biloxi (meaning “first people”) met the explorer who was instructed by the King of France to claim the coastal region. Since its discovery, eight flags have flown over the city including the French, English, Spanish, West Florida Republic, Mississippi Magnolia, Confederate State, Mississippi State, and that of the United States.
The first permanent settlement in French Louisiana was founded at Fort Maurepas, now in Ocean Springs, Mississippi and referred to as Old Biloxi, in 1699 under the direction of Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, with Louisiana separated from Spanish Florida at the Perdido River near Pensacola (founded 1559 and again in 1698).
In 1720, the administrative capital of French Louisiana was moved to Biloxi (or Bilocci) from Mobile (or Mobille). French Louisiana (part of New France) was known in French as La Louisiane in colonial times, but in modern times is called "La Louisiane française" to distinguish from the modern state of Louisiana (also "Louisiane" in French).
Due to fears of tides and hurricanes in the 18th century, the capital of French Louisiana was later moved by colonial governor Bienville, in 1723, from Biloxi to a new inland harbor town named La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans), built for the purpose in 1718-1720.
In 1763, following Great Britain's victory in the Seven Years War, France had to cede French Louisiana east of the Mississippi River, except for New Orleans, to Great Britain, as part of the Treaty of Paris. At that same time, Louisiana west of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, was ceded to Spain as part of the Treaty of Fontainebleau.
British rule persisted from 1763 to 1779, and then Spanish rule from 1779 to 1798. Despite this, the character of Biloxi remained mostly French. In 1811, Biloxi came under United States of America control as part of the Mississippi Territory. Mississippi, and Biloxi with it, were then admitted to the union in 1817.
Biloxi's casino history dates back to a period in the 1940s, when open, if technically illegal, gambling took place in a casino within the Broadwater Beach Resort. Open gambling ended during the 1950s. The Mississippi Gulf Coast became known as the "Poor Man's Riviera", and was frequented by Southern families interested in fishing expeditions during the summer. Commercially, Biloxi was dominated by shrimp boats and oyster luggers.
In the early 1960s, the Gulf Coast again emerged as a prime alternative to Florida as a southern vacation destination among Northerners, with Biloxi a center of the focus. Biloxi hotels upgraded their amenities and hired chefs from France and Switzerland in an effort to provide some of the best seafood cuisine in the country.
With the introduction of legal gambling in Mississippi in the 1990s, Biloxi was again transformed. It became an important center for casinos, and the hotels and complexes brought millions of dollars in tourism revenue to the city.
For more information on Biloxi area casinos or general information contact the Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau online at www.gulfcoast.org or call toll-free at 888-4MS-GULF.

This story was published on 06 Jan 2012.