Margaritaville Biloxi Proposal

Businessman and developer Cono Caranna has plans for a family-friendly Margaritaville Resort Biloxi built around a 373-room hotel.

Also included is a 55,000-square-foot entertainment complex including separate ropes courses for adults and children aged 2 to 7; a zip-line roller coaster and a rock-climbing wall that rises to a restaurant entrance.

A pool, a 450-foot-long “lazy river” and two water slides will be reserved for hotel guests, but everything else in the entertainment complex, including several restaurants and bars, will be open to everyone.

Other amenities include hundreds of arcade games, six lanes of “boutique bowling” and two golf simulators programmed to emulate 87 top courses. The resort’s opening date has not been set but the hotel is taking room reservations for June 30 and later for now. Officials have scheduled a job fair May 1-3 at the Biloxi Civic Center, and say the resort should open within months, with 600 employees. This is the third attempt to bring Margaritaville to Biloxi. Jimmy Buffett and Harrah’s planned a $700 million casino resort in 2007, but those plans went under amid the world financial problems.

A smaller Margaritaville Casino opened in 2012 but filed for bankruptcy in 2014.