JEFFERSON – With champagne, roses, a brass band and hundreds of green balloons, officials and Greene County residents gathered to celebrate the work beginning on the new Jefferson casino.

Located at the corner of U.S. Highway 30 and Iowa Highway 4, the Wild Rose Casino and Resort in Jefferson will be a $40 million facility with a total footprint of 71,000 square feet, including the casino, events center, restaurant and hotel.

Greene County Supervisor John Muir guessed that about 250 people attended the event Thursday afternoon.

The resort will be a big boost to the whole area, said state Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, who represents Boone and Greene counties.

“One thing that kept popping up in my mind was the word ‘courage’,” said Baltimore.

It took courage for Wild Rose, which owns casinos in Emmetsburg and Clinton, to invest in the Jefferson location, he said. It took courage for the county supervisors and city council members to to take a public stand for the casino.

“It took a great deal of courage for three of the five Racing and Gaming Commission members to vote in favor of this casino application,” he added.

The commission approved gaming licenses for the project on June 12 to the Grow Greene County Gaming Corp.

The licenses were granted in spite of studies released in February which claimed the new casino would get most of its money by siphoning revenue from existing casinos.

The last casino license granted in Iowa was in Lyon County in 2010.

Norm Fandel, president of Grow Greene County, thanked the surrounding communities for their support.

“It’s a wonderful gift that the gaming commission and the state of Iowa has granted us,” Fandel said. “This project will foster many more projects like today. It’s a gift that will keep on giving.”

“The difference between this and every other casino project I have observed is how much the community banded together to bring it to fruition,” said Gary Kirke, chairman of Wild Rose Jefferson. “Across the region, local governments, businesses and volunteers worked in concert to tell the story of how this project would make a difference to this area.”

Residents voted in August 2013 to approve the casino application. The vote passed with 71 percent in favor – the highest ever percentage for a first-time casino vote in Iowa, said Tom Timmons, president of Wild Rose Jefferson.

“I think a lot of it was education,” Muir said. “All the town hall meetings. Anything they wondered about was pretty much answered.”

“The county was thirsty for something,” said Brenda Muir, Grown Greene County member.

Timmons talked about the project’s history and how it began when local farmer Kim Rueter showed him the “doughnut hole” on the map, showing the distance to every existing casino.

“I showed him a 30-mile radius around Jefferson,” Reuter said. “I told him I didn’t think this would bother any other casinos.”

Baltimore said as he walked the parade at Ogden Fun Days recently, many people expressed excitement about the casino.

“This is going to have a huge regional impact, and it’s going to go far beyond just the $7 million of payroll, the $40-plus million of investment that’s going to be here, and 75-plus full-time employee jobs, and the million and a half in estimated charitable contributions,” he said.