Parq was everything its kitschy rivals with their all-you-can-eat buffets in the suburbs were not: its understated decor was bathed in natural light, its elevated outdoor park boasted 200 real pines unlike the copses of fake trees at the busy River Rock Casino Resort near the airport. Its fine dining options included tea buds painted in gold. It’s two luxe hotels in one: a 329-room JW Marriott and the boutique-styled Douglas with 188 rooms.

Vancouver had also appeared a uniquely promising market. "The revenues in Vancouver have grown consistently within the past 10 years; pretty much every other market has not seen a raise in table revenues," Scott Menke, chief executive officer of Paragon Gaming Holding Co., the Las Vegas-based casino developer and operator that spearheaded Parq’s construction, told Bloomberg News ahead of its opening in 2017. Paragon abandoned the underperforming asset in February this year, selling its stake to PBC.

Horgan Crackdown
British Columbia Premier John Horgan’s government has been spearheading Canada’s anti-money laundering charge, and its hiring of an independent investigator to probe the gambling industry coincided almost to the day with Parq’s ill-timed opening in September 2017.

Explosive details have filtered out: at Great Canadian Gaming Corp.’s River Rock, dubbed the "epicenter" of hot money by the investigator, C$13.5 million in 20-dollar bills had been accepted in a single month in 2015 and couriers were delivering cash to patrons in late-night drop offs. In another instance, a gambler was permitted to convert C$3.1 million, mostly in twenties, into chips at Gateway Casinos & Entertainment Ltd.’s Starlight Casino.

In January 2018, the government-owned British Columbia Lottery Corp., responsible for managing casinos in the province, hastily implemented new measures requiring gamblers to provide a bank receipt on the source of funds for any buy-ins amounting to C$10,000 or more within a 24-hour period. It also hired Ernst & Young to audit three years of transactions at River Rock but concluded in February that "there was no systemic pattern of money-laundering activity."

Be that as it may, gambling at River Rock isn’t the roaring business it once was either -- the anti-money laundering measures appear an irritant to patrons.

Quick Changes
"The changes in procedures were implemented extremely, extremely quickly," Great Canadian Gaming Chief Executive Officer Rod Baker told investors on a call last May. "I think it’s even more challenging for our guests when they’ve been used to doing things a certain way for a certain amount of time, and then all of a sudden, you know, they get turned away and they got to figure out – they got to go to the bank that day."

The company reported last month that table drop -- the amount of money patrons used at tables to buy chips -- fell 16 percent in 2018 to C$298 million at its 10 properties in British Columbia, driven by a decline at River Rock. Revenue from British Columbia also dipped 3 percent due in part to the new source-of-funds procedures, it said.

Meanwhile, Dundee has said it’s seeking to bring in a new partner to Parq by Tuesday. All told, investors had pumped more than C$1 billion in long-term debt and equity into Parq by the end of 2018, according to filings. Dundee, which put in C$142 million of that, has said it doesn’t expect to fully recover its investment and that it could take another year or two before Parq is closer to stable operations.

"They don’t necessarily think they’re going to get their money back," said Hood. "But they do think that they’ll get a substantial portion back and that’s why they don’t just give up and sell it."