Happy Valley Casino Is Finally Opening After Five Years, Two Partners, and a Trip to the State Supreme Court
Happy Valley Casino opens May 8 at the Nittany Mall near Penn State, completing a five-year journey and overcoming multiple obstacles.
On the weekend of April 24 and 25, slot machines spun, and table games ran in a former Macy’s department store at the Nittany Mall in College Township, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from Beaver Stadium. The proceeds went to the State College Food Bank and the local YMCA. The grand opening is scheduled for May 8. The road to get there took the better part of five years and was considerably less charitable.
Happy Valley Casino is a Category 4 mini-casino, authorized under Pennsylvania’s 2017 Gaming Expansion Act to offer up to 750 slot machines and 30 live-dealer table games in a 94,000-square-foot space that once housed one of the Nittany Mall’s last major anchors. It is the first casino of any kind in Center County, and if the people who built it are right, it is also a $120 million bet on the idea that a college town whose entertainment infrastructure has been overwhelmingly oriented toward 49,000 undergraduates has been badly underserving everyone else.
The Decision That Locked It In
The casino’s origin story begins not in 2020, when Ira Lubert won the license auction, but in 2017, when Pennsylvania’s Gaming Expansion Act gave municipalities a narrow window to opt out of being designated as potential Category 4 casino sites. College Township was the only Center Region municipality that declined to opt out, citing, even then, the hope that a casino might help revitalize the Nittany Mall corridor. That decision locked in the community’s path, and it meant that while opposition voices grew louder over the years, residents had limited legal avenues to block the development outright.
The Nittany Mall had been in slow decline for years before the pandemic. JCPenney left in 2015. Sears and Bon-Ton both shuttered in 2018. When Macy’s announced its closure in January 2020, the last major anchor was gone. What followed was a cascade of smaller closures, American Eagle, Hot Topic, Kay Jewelers, Express, until the mall’s tenant roster thinned to a mix of budget retailers and vacancy.
Into that void stepped Lubert, a Penn State alumnus, former chair of the university’s board of trustees, and real estate investor with a long history in the State College area. He won the September 2020 auction to apply for a Category 4 license with a $10 million bid, partnered with Bally’s Corporation to jointly design, develop, construct, and manage the casino, and filed an application with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in early 2021.
The Fights That Followed
What should have been a straightforward licensing process became years of litigation. Stadium Casino, the Cordish Companies’ Pennsylvania entity, filed legal challenges arguing that Lubert had acted as a “Trojan horse for hire”, that while he was eligible to bid because of his existing ownership interests in Pennsylvania casino properties, parties who would not have been eligible, including Bally’s, had contributed to the bid. Cordish argued the entire license should be voided.
The challenge wound through the courts for years. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board approved the license in January 2023. Stadium Casino appealed to the state Supreme Court, which dismissed the challenge in July 2024. Only then could construction begin in earnest.
In the meantime, Bally’s had already exited. The company withdrew from the project in September 2024, citing a need to demonstrate to the Gaming Control Board that SC Gaming could independently develop and operate the casino without reliance on a third party. Lubert said the withdrawal had no impact on the project’s progress. It did, however, require finding a new operating partner. In early 2025, SC Gaming entered into a framework agreement with Saratoga Casino Holdings, a New York-based operator managing properties in Saratoga Springs, Black Hawk, and Natchez. The PGCB provisionally approved Saratoga as the majority owner of SC Gaming, and the deal closed in January 2026.
Construction began in March 2025 and proceeded at a pace that suggested everyone involved had already waited long enough.
What the Opposition Said
The legal battles were fought by rival casino operators protecting their market share. The community opposition was a different kind of fight, and it was sustained throughout.
The Say No to the Nittany Mall Casino campaign documented more than 4,898 messages of opposition submitted to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, compared to 115 in support. Critics argued the PGCB failed to acknowledge any of that feedback at its final public hearing before awarding the license.
Opponents raised concerns about the proximity of a 24-hour gambling venue to a campus of 49,000 students, the potential for elevated addiction rates among young adults, and the argument that Pennsylvania’s gaming market was already saturated and that revenue would come almost entirely from Center County residents rather than drawing new visitors to the region.
A local software developer named Andrew Shaffer ran the campaign website and attended years of public meetings. His argument was that the people who wanted to gamble in Pennsylvania already could, and that a casino in State College would not create new economic activity so much as redirect existing household spending toward slot machines.
The casino’s developers countered that the target customer was not a Penn State student. Marketing manager Alana Woelk described the post-graduation demographic as underserved. “I think we’re looking at State College as a whole, not particularly students,” she said. “I think once you graduate, that’s actually a very underserved market in this area.”
What Is Actually Opening
Happy Valley Casino will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in a smoke-free environment and requires patrons to be 21 or older. The gaming floor includes blackjack, roulette, craps, baccarat, and other table offerings across four pits, along with 600 slot machines at launch. A sports betting section is included, though SC Gaming has previously indicated limited enthusiasm for the low-margin sports wagering business.
General manager Eric Pearson has described the casino’s relationship with the mall as symbiotic and aspirational. “Currently, the Nittany Mall is not necessarily the hive of activity that we hope it develops into as we get up and going,” he said, noting that interest in leasing spaces in the mall has increased significantly in recent weeks. Whether the foot traffic a casino generates translates into the kind of retail revitalization the Township envisioned in 2017 remains to be seen.
A third-party impact study commissioned by College Township projected between $1.4 million and $1.6 million in new annual tax revenue and minimal negative social effects. SC Gaming’s own projections anticipated approximately 400 full-time equivalent jobs in the first year.
State College is an unusual market for this kind of property. It is a college town built around a single institution, with a transient population, a student-dominated nightlife, and limited entertainment infrastructure for the non-student community that has lived there for decades. Whether Happy Valley Casino fills that gap profitably enough to justify five years of legal fees, two management partners, and one trip to the state Supreme Court is a question the May 8 grand opening will only begin to answer.
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