(Radio Iowa) – A company pursuing a casino license in South Sioux City has presented Nebraska regulators with plans for another casino in northeast Nebraska. The operation in Norfolk would be within about 150 mile radius of four Iowa casinos. The plans from WarHorse Gaming include a horse track that’s five-eights of a mile long and converting Norfolk’s convention center into a casino.

Lance Morgan, C-E-O of Ho-Chunk, Incorporated, the parent company of WarHorse, says “There’s a hotel there. There’s a restaurant, brewery…and they have this 20,000 foot convention center right there.”  He says the plans for this race track/casino complex in Norfolk have been in development for four years. “It’s going to be about a $55 million project all in when you actually have the gaming. The track itself is not going to be that much,” he says.

Morgan’s company has also submitted gaming license requests for South Sioux City, Omaha and Lincoln as well as Norfolk. WarHorse estimates it would employ 250 at the Norfolk casino, which would include sports betting as well as other casino-style gaming. Last fall, Nebraska voters approved casino operations at state-licensed horse tracks. As Radio Iowa reported last week, IOWA’s 19 state-licensed casinos took in a record one-and-a-half BILLION dollars in gross revenue for the fiscal year that ended June 30th.

The Hard Rock Casino in Sioux City, which would be closest to the proposed casino in Norfolk, Nebraska, reports 87-million dollars in gross revenue over the past 12 months. The two casinos in Council Bluffs that are closest to pending casino projects in Omaha took in a combined 238 million in gross revenue in the last state fiscal year.