Bi-state casino cashes in on California lottery

While customers play the slot machines on the Nevada side, the lottery tickets are selling briskly just a few feet to the west.

Since the lottery tickets went on sale May 22, Gold Ranch had racked up about $329,000 in sales.

"Business is good - I mean real good. I would have to say we couldn't be happier with what we've seen," co-owner Peter Stremmel told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

The happiness is not shared at the Hallelujah Junction General Store to the north, which was California's No. 3 lottery outlet in the year that ended April 4.

Gold Ranch, on Interstate-80, is about 15 miles closer to Reno than Hallelujah Junction, which is just across the California line on U.S. 395.

Nobody was willing to talk to the Gazette-Journal, but sales there dropped 22 percent in the two months after Gold Ranch started selling the tickets, according to a Lottery spokeswoman. She said the sales of about $335,000 from May 15 to July 15 compared with about $432,000 during the same period a year earlier.

Stremmel said he thinks Gold Ranch and Hallelujah Junction can coexist. He noted that in the two months, the two outlets combines for sales of about $664,000 - approximately double what Hallelujah sold by itself during the mid-May to mid-July period in 1997.

"We are not interested in burying Hallelujah," he said.

But Barbara Hudson, who lives 10 miles south of Reno, appreciates the shorter drive to Gold Ranch.

"It's closer than going to Hallelujah Junction and I like to play it," she said as she scratched her tickets to expose their numbers. "Yes, I'm going to come back out here."

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