Foxwoods Resort Casino will break ground Feb. 1 on construction of the state’s first Great Wolf Lodge family hotel and resort.
Plans call for construction of a 91,000-square-foot indoor water park and family entertainment center. Great Wolf Lodge at Mashantucket is slated to open in 2025.
The hotel and waterpark resort will be built on 13 acres adjacent to Foxwoods.
Great Wolf Lodge is a Wisconsin-based family resort chain known for its water-centered amusement parks that include accommodations, restaurants, arcades and children’s activities.
Great Wolf Lodge will be the company’s 23rd resort in North America and third resort in the Northeast, with the other two closest locations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Â
At the groundbreaking ceremony, several executives from both Foxwoods and Great Wolf Lodge are expected to be on hand, including Foxwoods President and CEO Jason Guyot, Chairman Rodney A. Butler of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and Great Wolf Resorts CEO John Murphy.
Foxwoods officials and the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation announced in a statement back in Feb. 2022 that it had formed a partnership with Great Wolf Resorts to coincide with the resort casino’s 30th anniversary. Foxwoods, located at 350 Trolley Line Blvd. in Ledyard, opened in 1992.Â
In addition to Great Wolf Lodge, there are several other major expansion projects slated over the coming months and years, according to Foxwoods. Those include a new, 30,000-square foot high-stakes bingo hall to be built in the Festival Casino space, along with a new expo center that will take over the current bingo hall, and feature more than 75,000-square feet of space for corporate events, trade shows, sporting events and more. Renovations to the resort’s main entrance are also being planned. Â
Last September, Foxwoods also announced that it is developing a new $85 million casino at its Ledyard property that will open next summer, the gaming organization’s first major expansion since 2008.
The addition will feature a 50,000-square-foot gaming space with table games and slot machines and a celebrity-chef owned restaurant. There will also be a high-limit slot area and a 40-seat bar with slot machines.
The new casino will be in the Grand Ballroom, located in the Grand Pequot area.
Foxwoods also recently partnered with DraftKings for its sports betting and iGaming operations.
