Area man sees toil come to fruition

The new Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs casino melds slot machine gambling with other forms of entertainment. It also is a blend of the Connecticut-based Mohegan Tribe’s heritage and outstanding features of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s topography and history.

So it may be fitting that the lead designer is a Dallas Township native who now lives in Connecticut.

Brian Davis heads the gaming and hospitality group for JCJ Architecture, a 210-person firm with offices in major cities on both coasts, including the one in Hartford, where he is based. A 1973 graduate of Wyoming Seminary, he returns to the area regularly and is planning to invite friends to a party at the casino once opening festivities wind down. For now, he’s eagerly, if a bit nervously, anticipating Thursday’s opening of the 300,000-square-foot showplace.

“There’s always a lot of trepidation,” Davis said, especially toward the end of a project, when the final budgets and schedules are completed. The casino is looking good on both counts. “This is scoring very high points,” he said, by opening a month ahead of the previously announced date and at or perhaps a touch under the final $208 million budget.

In a narrative of the design, Davis, 53, describes “The Journey” that patrons will take through the casino, guided by depictions of natural and manmade features in the region.

“The whole concept here was a celebration of the Susquehanna River valley and the natural resources associated with it,” Davis said, including the economy that developed around coal mining. “I had an appreciation for what the coal industry meant to the history of the valley,” both in the past and currently.

Davis feels coal was a double-edged sword for the region, an economic engine that gained a negative image from deadly accidents, worker unrest and ugly culm banks that were left behind.

But enough time has transpired that “looking back on it, it’s much easier to celebrate” the early success of the valley that grew from the mineral’s abundance.

Whenever possible, Davis specified the use of local materials. The base of the exterior is made from two kinds of indigenous stone, beige fieldstone broken by horizontal stripes of black quartzite that “represent the bands of coal embedded in the sandstone.”

Art glass and mosaic tile panels in one entrance lobby depict mountains; in the other the river. A sculpture executed by Baut Studios of Swoyersville makes a dramatic statement in the main lobby, changing from a rough coal base to gleaming diamond-like crystals as it rises from floor to ceiling.

“That was one that I developed almost in the beginning,” Davis said, giving small freehand sketches to the studio before leaving the execution to them. “They expanded it into something I or my firm wouldn’t have been able to do.”

That kind of collaboration ran through the entire project, Davis said, with contractors invited to make recommendations about materials and construction techniques.

“If you continue along the journey, the perimeter concourse is designed as a very abstract path through a woodland,” Davis said. Representations of leaves, hillsides and the river flow along a custom-made carpet, with an occasional yellow-speckled trout making an appearance.

The carpet was manufactured in Ireland from architects’ designs. “We actually do paintings, then translate them into digital copies,” Davis explained. The mill then made samples that got final tweaking.

Railings that separate the path and gaming area are made from laser cut steel and acrylic in the form of mountain laurel, Pennsylvania’s state flower. Similarly, five large custom-designed and fabricated chandeliers Davis calls “nests” are decorated in a pattern of ruffed grouse, the state bird.

Another local artisan, Eric Keil of Bear Creek, was commissioned to make four, 10-foot-tall wood sculptures set along the path.

Davis’s trek ends in the center of the gaming floor, where the Sunburst bar is set below a 120-foot diameter abstraction of the sun.

The basic circular shape of the casino floor, the sun and a soaring torch outside match themes established at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Conn., where Davis also has done work.

“(The torch) represents a modern version of the smudge pot, which was a ceremonial tool used by spiritual leaders of the tribe,” said Downs chief executive Bobby Soper, a tribal member. “It has cultural significance and is a way to make a connection with our Connecticut property.”

The Timbers Buffet, which is casino-owned, also shares iconography associated with the tribe and the Mohegan Sun, but most of the 10 restaurants in the complex are tenants, and use their own interior design. “The public face is something that we have control over,” Davis said.

The Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority has been demanding to work for, he said, but not unreasonable. “They’re relentless about their quality,” but very clear about what they want, he said.

From the start one message was to link the casino’s design to the community that hosts it, something Davis was eager and well-equipped to do.

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