Bally's Baton Rouge, formerly the Belle of Baton Rouge, is a casino hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is owned by Gaming and Leisure Properties and operated by Bally's Corporation.

Venue: Bally's Baton Rouge
Town: Baton Rouge, US

Bally's Baton Rouge, formerly the Belle of Baton Rouge, is a casino hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It is owned by Gaming and Leisure Properties and operated by Bally's Corporation. The hotel is 10 stories tall, with 288 rooms, a swimming pool, and a fitness center. Next to the hotel is a five-story-tall, 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2), glass-enclosed atrium. Inside the atrium is a performance venue that has been used for concerts, mixed martial arts events, and nationally televised boxing matches. Other amenities include meeting spaces, three eateries, and two parking garages. The former casino boat was a 268-foot (82 m), four-deck sternwheeler built by Avondale Shipyard. It has 28,500 square feet (2,650 m2) of gaming space spread across three decks, containing 350 slot machines and 10 table games. The Belle atrium is located at Catfish Town, a historic warehouse district that was redeveloped and opened as a festival marketplace in July 1984. The $30-million project was developed by a group led by Jerry Dodson, with part of the budget financed by the city government using grant money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Catfish Town struggled to attract tenants and shoppers, and by November 1986, its developers had decided to cut their losses. Ownership was transferred in December 1987 to Allied Bank, the primary mortgage holder, as a deed in lieu of foreclosure. The bank's property managers reoriented Catfish Town toward being an office park, based on a marketing study that found that Baton Rouge did not have the population or tourism base to support a festival marketplace. The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was brought in as a tenant in December 1989, and would come to occupy more than half of the complex's leasable space. Catfish Town was put up for sale in April 1992 by NAB Asset Corp., which had come to own the property through a series of bank reorganizations. The RTC had given notice that it would vacate its offices in January 19