The structural frame of Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia is complete, with The Cordish Companies and Bruce Smith Enterprise marking the topping-out of the 445,000-square-foot resort in Petersburg on October 8. The milestone puts the property on track for a late-2027 opening and signals that its food and beverage buildout—among the most ambitious attached to a regional gaming resort in recent years—is moving into the finish phase.
The F&B Lineup
The resort will house 20 restaurant and bar venues, three of which are established Cordish concepts with proven casino-floor track records. Sports & Social, a USA Today Top 10 Sports Bar honoree, anchors the entertainment-dining mix with an 8,000-square-foot footprint centered on an 82-foot-wide LED screen. The concept, already operating in 18 locations from Atlanta's Truist Park corridor to the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, offers made-from-scratch gameday food, curated cocktails, and a rotating beer selection. For operators tracking sports-bar and entertainment-dining trends, the format illustrates how large-format AV infrastructure is becoming a baseline expectation at gaming-hospitality properties.
The Prime Rib®, a fine-dining steakhouse that collected a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence in 2026 and has held the Zagat No. 1 ranking across its Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana locations, brings a white-tablecloth counterpoint to the sports bar energy. Its menu spans prime rib, filet mignon, ribeye, porterhouse, and NY strip alongside seafood including jumbo lump crab cakes and Chilean sea bass. Luk Fu, the portfolio's Pan-Asian entry, won "Best Asian and Best Sushi" at Casino Player Magazine's 2025 Best of Dining & Nightlife Awards and will offer fresh sushi, wok-fired dishes, noodle bowls, and traditional soups drawing on Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese culinary traditions. Both Luk Fu and The Prime Rib interiors are being designed by Beth Bloom Designs, a national firm specializing in hospitality food and beverage environments. Additional dining concepts and local hospitality partnerships are expected to be announced before the 2027 opening.
Scale and Economic Impact
Beyond the dining program, the resort will include a 200-room upscale hotel, a resort pool, spa, fitness center, a sportsbook, more than 1,600 slot machines, over 70 live table games including a 35-table poker room, and a 70,000-square-foot multi-purpose event center. The property is projected to generate $2.8 billion in regional economic stimulus over its first 10 years, including $504 million in tax revenues. On the employment side, the permanent resort is expected to add roughly 1,000 jobs to the approximately 600 already created by the temporary Live! Casino Virginia facility that opened in January 2026, bringing total permanent headcount to around 1,600.
"With its scale, quality and breadth of offerings, Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia will establish a new standard for gaming, hospitality and entertainment in the Commonwealth," said David Cordish, CEO and Chairman of The Cordish Companies. For foodservice and beverage operators evaluating the integrated resort model, the Virginia property underscores how casino developers are using multi-concept F&B programs—rather than a single anchor restaurant—as a primary driver of destination appeal. Coverage from Food & Beverage Magazine has tracked this shift across gaming markets nationally. The Cordish Companies is also hosting a Local Contractor & Vendor Fair on October 14 at the Petersburg Public Library, where food and beverage suppliers can explore procurement opportunities with the resort team.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
