Out-of-towners who visited the temporary Danville Casino are now returning to the city on a regular basis to go to the Caesars Virginia permanent resort. When some of them come to Danville, they shop at Foxglove Clothing.
“We’ve got customers that were coming to the tent, and now they’re coming to the brick-and-mortar, and they’re coming every four to six weeks,” said John Mason, co-owner of Foxglove. “They’ve become regular customers. We’re on a first-name basis.”
One couple from western North Carolina discovered both Foxglove and the Schoolfield Restaurant next door during a visit to Caesars, Mason said.
“They said sometimes they’ll drive into town just to come to the restaurant to eat,” Mason said. “That’s a long way to drive for dinner.”
Both Foxglove and the Schoolfield Restaurant are right across Main Street from the casino.
But other business owners in Danville’s River District, about a 10-minute drive from Caesars, aren’t seeing the same boost in customers.
“Our traffic has been down basically since the casino opened,” said Ben Rippe, owner of Rippe’s Apparel, Shoes and Luxury Outerwear, which opened in 1907 and is one of the River District’s longest-running businesses.
The decrease in foot traffic hasn’t hurt the business, Rippe said, as overall sales and gross profits are still above last year’s, partially due to online sales. But the casino hasn’t yet resulted in more people shopping in-store.
“I can’t tell you if the casino is the direct cause of [decreased foot traffic]. It could be,” Rippe said. “It just seems coincidental. It was about that same time.”
One of Danville’s goals for bringing the casino to town was to capitalize on the increased visitation it will bring — a projected 2 million additional visitors per year — and encourage out-of-towners to patronize other businesses and attractions.
It’s common for localities with casinos to see this happen over time, said Doug Walker, an expert on the social and economic impacts of U.S. casino gambling, who is based in South Carolina.
“Across the country, places that have casinos see a positive impact on employment and on business in general in the long term,” Walker said. “That’s not to say that every local business is going to benefit, because some are more closely competing with how people spend their money on Saturday night. … It’s not true in every case. It’s looking at averages.”
In some ways, the city’s goals have been met. Lodging is increasing in Danville to accommodate increased visitation, and businesses like Foxglove are seeing casino regulars become customers.
In other ways, the city is still waiting for the full effects of Caesars Virginia’s presence. Sales tax revenue is down compared to last year, and foot traffic has declined or stayed the same for some business owners.
Like Rippe, the owners of Main Street Art Collective and The Smokestack Theater Company in the River District said they are also waiting to see the promised visitation spurred by Caesars.
Some of them are hopeful that foot traffic will increase as casino visitors learn more about what else Danville has to offer, especially after the opening of an anticipated visitor center at Caesars.
Others are more skeptical.
“Let’s see what happens,” Rippe said. “We’ve got it, we might as well be positive about it. If you have to have an extractive business like a casino in your town, we might as well see the good parts about it.”
Some businesses seeing upticks, others still waiting
Cheryl Sutherland, who owns Main Street Art Collective, said that she’s seen a small uptick in foot traffic since the casino opened, but nothing significant.
She’s not entirely convinced that casino-goers will regularly make their way downtown, she said.
“I was one of the ones who always thought that if people are going to the casino, they’re going to the casino,” Sutherland said. “Most people are doing that so far.”
Main Street Art Collective sells mostly handmade products from more than 80 local artisans.
Josh Lucia, managing director of Smokestack Theater Company, said he hasn’t seen increases in business from guests at Caesars yet either.
“We envisioned that maybe there would be families or groups of people, maybe half want to visit the casino, the other half don’t, so they’d come down here,” Lucia said. “I know the city is working on that, but the reality is that it hasn’t happened yet.”
Ticket sales have decreased this year at Smokestack, a nonprofit event venue that puts on about four major shows per year and also hosts improv events and summer programs for kids, Lucia said. He’s not certain whether this is entirely because of the casino, or because people are being more careful with their money in general.
“We do feedback forms to see what ZIP code people are coming from,” he said. “It’s still a lot of local people. I don’t often run into people that say they’re in town visiting the casino. … It seems that they’re going to the casino and staying there. And the further you get away from the casino, the less people are coming into town.”
It’s been the same for Rippe, who said that one or two customers a month say they’re in town to visit the casino.
Rippe said he’s concerned that Caesars will divert customers — even local ones — from other businesses.
“People in Danville might go to the casino and crank the levers,” he said. “One assumes that it will extract from retail sales and that the consumer will spend their discretionary money at the casino, at least in the first year. It might be different in the second year.”
Walker said this is a possibility, but that’s part of regular competition in a market. A casino is almost like any other new business that comes to town — older businesses will have to compete to keep up.
“No one likes competition for their own products,” he said. “Talking about peoples’ disposable income, the casino is just another option they have for entertainment.”
Localities with casinos tend to see higher employment and wages, and a higher number of operating businesses over time, according to a study by a professor at the University of Wisconsin’s economics department. This effect is more pronounced in smaller cities, where a large business can make a greater impact, Walker said.
“I wouldn’t treat it any differently than any other business,” he said. “You need customers, and when someone else comes in and is now competing for your customers … you need to be offering things that customers want, or they won’t go there. Businesses are going to have to adapt to the change of more car traffic, more foot traffic in the city. It’s a matter of catering to people that are coming from further away, and not just the local residents anymore.”
Walker said it’s hard to determine a concrete timeline for seeing positive effects.
Lucia is still hopeful that increases in traffic will happen over time, and he’s been pleased with Caesars’ involvement in the community. The company donated Smokestack Theater $5,000 to sponsor last year’s season, he said.
“That’s significant for us. That covers the cost of two shows,” Lucia said. “They’ve sponsored us out the gate.”
Caesars also invited Smokestack to apply for a grant, a process that usually happens the other way around, Lucia said. “Usually you have to go hunting for grants.”
Smokestack Theater asked for $15,000 for new seating and is still waiting to hear if the grant was approved, Lucia said.
Rippe said that he believes the concert venue at Caesars, which opened in June, will help drive visitors to local businesses.
“If I was a concertgoer, and I was coming from out of town, I would come early and maybe check out the town,” Rippe said. “Not just to gamble, but to see what the town might be like.”
Sam Rippe, Rippe’s son and the general manager of the store, said it’s more common for people attending concerts to shop at Rippe’s than traditional casino guests.
“Casino-goers are there to gamble, but concert people aren’t necessarily gambling,” he said.
Despite a decrease in foot traffic, Rippe said that the store’s overall sales and gross profit exceed last year’s. This is because online shopping accounts for a portion of their sales, he said, and about 60% of customer sales came from outside of the Danville area.
The River District Association, a nonprofit that works to promote River District businesses, has heard “mixed feedback on whether [local businesses] had seen any traffic from the casino,” said Director of Communications Shane Brogden.
A coming visitor center space in Caesars is intended to help connect casino visitors with local businesses, Brogden said. Lucia, Rippe and Sutherland said they hope that the new visitor center will better promote their businesses.
Sales tax down, meals and lodging taxes up
Sales tax revenues are down overall in Danville so far this fiscal year compared to last year, said Michael Adkins, the city’s chief financial officer and assistant city manager.
In the first six months of the fiscal year, which runs July 1 to June 30, the city had received about $6.5 million in sales tax revenue. That’s about 46% of the budgeted amount for the year, and about $537,000 shy of the 50% target for the end of 2025.
“Sales tax is still performing strong,” Adkins said. “However, it’s not meeting our budgeted expectations. Those expectations were primarily based on what we saw last fiscal year.”
So far this fiscal year is trailing last fiscal year by about half a million dollars, he said.
Adkins attributed the “sluggishness” in sales tax mostly to a decrease in construction in the city rather than to the casino’s presence. In 2025, major renovation and construction projects were underway at several Danville Public Schools buildings.
“Perhaps the subcontractors and contractors that were in our area were buying materials and supplies locally, which is not being repeated this year right now,” Adkins said at a January city council meeting.
Still, “we won’t be terribly under budget” for sales tax at the end of the fiscal year, he said.
Each year’s budget expectations are based on trends and projections from the previous fiscal year. Sales tax in Danville has been on a dramatic upward trend in the last five years, Adkins said.
City revenue in other areas, like meals and lodging taxes, was above budget at the end of 2025, he said at the meeting. This can likely be attributed to Caesars driving increased visitation to the area, he said in an interview.
Meals tax was right about on budget at the halfway point in the fiscal year, bringing in $6.7 million in revenue, representing 48% of the budget amount.
In the first few days of January, the city received about $400,000 in payments that were delayed due to holiday reporting, Adkins said at the meeting. If they had been received on time in December, the total meals tax for the first half of the fiscal year would’ve been $7.1 million, or 51% of the budget.
“So there are no worries about meals tax at this time,” he said.
The city had also received $2 million in lodging taxes at the end of December. This is about 54% of the yearly budget, outperforming expectations, Adkins said.
“We’ve seen an 11% increase [in lodging tax] over last year at this time, about $200,000,” he said. “If you talk about nightly stays, those are up about 10% when you compare the first six months of the year to the first six months of last year.”
This fiscal year has averaged about 23,700 hotel stays per month, about 2,200 more than this time last year.
Caesars can “absolutely” take credit for the increase in lodging taxes this year, Adkins said.
The casino property includes a 320-room hotel, and Caesars visitors often stay at other hotel properties in town.
The city also expects to receive more than $35 million in gaming tax revenue from Caesars this fiscal year.
Rippe said he understands why the city has been so supportive of the casino, because its tax revenue “far outweighs the little merchants downtown.”
High hopes for new visitor center
The Danville Visitor Center on River Park Drive is off of U.S. 29 and sees about 20,000 visitors a year. It’s affiliated with the Virginia Tourism Corporation, which means that it carries brochures and information about other localities in Virginia, said Lisa Meriwether, Danville’s tourism director.
That cross-promotion is beneficial, but the visitor center that’s under construction at Caesars will focus instead on the Danville-Pittsylvania region, Meriwether said.
“We’ll be more laser-focused on local things,” she said. “Right now, anybody can walk into the River Park center and pick up a brochure on Charlottesville. We know that folks in Charlottesville could pick up a brochure on our community. But this center is going to be more focused on this region.”
The center will be housed in a 600-square-foot space in a corridor that leads to the Caesars spa, fitness center and hotel elevators.
“It’s not right out from where guests check in, but I think it’s in a really good location because people wander and walk the property,” Meriwether said.
Employees from the Danville Visitor Center will “float back and forth” between the River Park Drive location and Caesars. They’re well-versed in local businesses and attractions and will be able to make recommendations to casino guests, Meriwether said.
Business owners are eager to see this happen, Sutherland said.
“Those people working in the visitor’s center know Danville, they know where to send people, and that’s imperative,” she said. “The casino workers might just not know.”
Lucia said that once the visitor center opens, the positive effects on downtown businesses might speed up.
“I know that the city is working on it, the casino is working on it, so I don’t fault them, but it’s just going to take some time to see the fruits of that labor,” he said. “I don’t want it to sound negative because I can see them trying. … These things take time, so it’s not going to happen overnight. A year from now might be a different story.”
The Caesars visitor center will offer local brochures and T-shirts, just like the current center. But it will also be outfitted with digital kiosks that will allow guests to build customized itineraries for a visit to Danville, she said. It will also have interactive maps and photo booth features.
A digital wall will play videos about local attractions and promotional material from local businesses, Meriwether said.
“In keeping with the style of Caesars Virginia, we wanted to go a little bit more high-tech,” she said. “You can go into our existing center and pick up paper items, and that’s great, people love that. But this is just going to come to life. It’s going to be interactive and colorful and just fun.”
Meriwether said that ideally, the new visitor center would have been open by now. But she’s still waiting on furnishings and digital components.
“Nothing moves fast,” she said, adding that she hopes to have updates on a concrete timeline in the next month or so.
Mason said that although Foxglove has seen increased visitation from the casino, he thinks Danville missed an opportunity by not having the visitor center open sooner.
“We’ve missed the boat because they have not been more proactive to get in there and tell people what’s here,” he said. “They dropped the ball.”
Caesars visitors ask Mason and his wife, Anne, who co-owns Foxglove, about where they should eat lunch outside of the casino, he said. Mason said they’re happy to provide recommendations, but he wishes the visitor center was open to do this instead.
Rippe said he would like to see the city introduce a shuttle service to bring guests to the River District and other areas of Danville. There was talk of such a service when the casino first opened, but nothing has materialized.
Danville City Manager Ken Larking said that the city has “not decided to add this service at this time. It’s always something that would be under consideration.”
Meriwether said that she’s asked in the two previous city budgets for a multipassenger van to take guests on regular tours of the city, originating from the Danville Visitor Center.
“We need to get more information in people’s hands,” she said. “What we were trying to do is engage the visitor a little longer and make sure that they walked away with more than they thought they wanted.”
