Image courtesy of HBG Design and KdG

The Mall at Rockingham Park is joining the list of New Hampshire malls whose owners think a casino will work to fill a vacant anchor space.

The mall’s owner, The Cordish Companies, has teamed up with prominent local developers Joe Faro and Sal Lupoli to propose converting the mall’s old Lord & Taylor space into a 159,000-square-foot entertainment complex. The mall’s Lord & Taylor store closed in 2020.

Faro also owns the sprawling Tuscan Village development next door, where redevelopment of the old Rockingham Park racetrack is ongoing.

According to public filings, the $160 million redevelopment, dubbed the “Live! Casino,” would include 60,000 square feet of gaming and restaurants on the first floor, plus a sports bar, golf simulators and more restaurants on the second. The third floor, at 25,000 square feet, would serve as back-of-house space.

The project has been designed by Memphis-based hospitality specialists HBG Design and St. Louis-based casino and restaurant design and engineering firm KdG.

The project is expected to get a conditional use permit hearing before the town Planning Board Sept. 24.

The casino proposal is the second for the area of Salem in recent years – one pitched for the racetrack site flopped before Faro brought his plan forward. If successful, it would also be the second added to a New Hampshire mall in place of an old department store anchor after the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua’s Nash Casino. That casino is scheduled to open this winter in the mall’s old Sears space.