Michigan winters are unforgiving.
In 2024-25, the upper peninsula got almost 330 inches of snow and temperatures as low as -32 degrees. Grand Rapids, by contrast, was almost balmy, with 64 inches of the white stuff and temps bottoming out at -6.
Luckily for Michiganders, every day is fair weather at Gun Lake Casino in Wayland, about 20 miles south of Grand Rapids.
In May, the property, owned and operated by the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, opened a six-story, 32,000-square-foot tropical paradise, originally called the Aquadome, later rechristened the Wawyé Oasis. The glass-enclosed atrium features palm trees and other greenery, three pools and a daytime climate that never dips below 80 degrees. After hours, the Oasis can host concerts, company parties, corporate meetings—even dive-in movies.
It’s all part of Gun Lake’s $300 million Phase 5 expansion. Completed in March, it also added a luxury hotel tower, new food outlets and the sumptuous, full-service MnoYé Spa. Topping it off is the Ogema Suite, two stories of VIP opulence with a grand staircase, in-suite elevator, multiple bars and a billiard table.
“When you look at the array of amenities—a hotel, a spa—some of them are natural, because we’re shooting for four-diamond status or higher,” says Gun Lake CEO Sal Semola. “The big differentiator is the Oasis.”
Big Splash
Design began in late 2021, still during the Covid-19 pandemic, when every investment was a leap of faith. “There were a lot of supply-chain issues at the time,” says Semola. “Cost of capital was moving in an upward trajectory.” But the expansion was “a no-brainer,” a vote of confidence in the region’s long-term potential.
In a crowded landscape—Michigan has 26 tribal and commercial casinos—Gun Lake has a key advantage: its location, about halfway between Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo on busy Route 131, traveled by 125,000 motorists per day. To win more of those potential patrons, the Gun Lake team needed an irresistible value proposition. They collaborated with Memphis-based HBG Design, a longtime leader in tribal architecture and interiors.
The Oasis was inspired in part by Semola’s visit to The Pool at Harrah’s in Atlantic City’s marina district. The bilevel venue, tricked out with hot tubs and cabanas, swings easily from luxury day club to high-energy nightclub, with a revolving cast of celebrity DJs, reality TV stars and influencers. And with the exception of an outdoor rooftop deck, it’s weatherproof.
At Gun Lake, HBG Principal Nathan Peak envisioned an even more versatile space, “a combination of the best concert venue and the best pool,” with smaller “living rooms” clustered inside the larger footprint. That arrangement makes for distinct but simultaneous identities: a family-friendly pool to one side, 21-plus and VIP pools on the other, complete with swim-up bar. By day, the pool party can accommodate about 400 people. Later, capacity swells to about 1,500.
Changeover is fairly simple, says HBG Principal Paul Bell. “The HVAC system is very dynamic. Over several hours, ramp-up or ramp-down can take an 80-degree environment and cool it to 68 degrees,” with a comfortable 60 percent humidity. Engineers have devised an interface with presets for varying entertainment modes.
There’s ample storage for chairs, tables and other supplies, plus a full kitchen and a dedicated loading dock. “What we didn’t want was to make this complicated,” Peak says. “It looks great, but we pride ourselves on making sure that it functions even better.”
Glass Houses
The six-story, 29,000-square-foot atrium dome was constructed from 800 individual glass panels supported by a steel truss. The panels—none more than 10 or 12 feet long—were shipped from Shanghai. The steel came from Turkey.
“It was all put together mechanically during the winter months, saving time on construction,” Peak explains. “Yes, there was a lot of assembly required. But it went up a lot faster than a typical long-span structure.”
Rather than a vertical wall, HBG opted for a tiered effect. A sloping roofline makes the most of natural sunlight, for “a window to the sky” across four seasons.
“It’s almost like a cake,” says Peak. “We graze light around the edges of the Oasis so the proportions feel natural for customers. We like how it’s cradled and how the arc and curve of the hotel follow the same form.”
Low-emissivity glass reflects infrared light while allowing just enough UV light for tropical foliage.
“There are energy savings from the solar heat gain in the atrium, natural lighting during the day, the use of low-e glass and insulated panels throughout the envelope of the building,” Bell says. The glass of the hotel tower is curved and multihued, with a fritted pattern to prevent bird strikes.
For nighttime illumination, says Peak, “it’s almost a cliché now to use lots of color-changing LEDs. But Gun Lake did it in a very elegant way, with very warm lighting around the casino, and we continued that with our lighting for the hotel and Oasis. It might feel restrained, but we believe it to be the same brand and quality level of the original property.”
Decorative acoustic panels enhance and regulate sound inside the Oasis. For live performances, a “temporary yet dramatic” installation of flex acoustics can be suspended 40 feet above the stage for crisp audio transmission.
A Sense of Place
For designers and tribal leadership, it was important that the Phase 5 addition complement the original casino, a staple of the region since 2011.
The cornerstone property is “a mid-rise warehouse type of structure—pretty linear, not a whole lot to the exterior,” Semola says. “Phase 5 changed that façade, adding some shape to it. But ideally, if you came here for the first time, you’d think it was built this way from day one, inside and out.”
For the hotel finish or skin, planners considered silver tones. “But we have to feel like we’re part of the area,” says the CEO. “We’re in a rural area. The topography is somewhat flat. We wanted to keep it more earthy. I wasn’t going to drop the Cosmopolitan into our skyline.”
The hotel dominates the horizon and serves as a calling card to passersby. It’s also an effective windbreak, deflecting the strong north and northwest airstreams typical of the area. In winter, that barrier keeps snowdrift from accumulating on the rooftop.
“We’re diligent, even down to the porte cochere entry, to have a very high wall there,” says Bell. “It blocks prevailing winds and keeps a nice entry and arrival experience for all the guests.”
The Oasis is meant to be discovered, says Peak. “With a huge market coming from Grand Rapids, we made sure through 3D models that we were capturing those view angles as you’re coming down 131, to see that tower at least a mile or more beyond. The Oasis façade kind of reveals itself. You don’t see it until you get past the hotel, and it’s really unexpected.”
The Amenities Arms Race
Casino resorts are outdoing each other with dining options, wellness centers, meeting facilities and pools. But in a competitive environment, every square foot has to earn its keep. Multipurpose, day-to-night venues generate revenue on a season-to-season, day-to-day and almost hour-to-hour basis.
Added to the hotel, spa and other new features, the Wawyé Oasis makes Gun Lake “a staycation type of opportunity for that outer market,” says Semola. “The versatility gives us that level playing field. I firmly expect to get business from Detroit, northwest Indiana, Illinois—within two hours, it changes our market and our positioning dramatically.”
“We work with lots of clients all over the country, and there’s a big buzz about what’s going on at Gun Lake,” Peak agrees. “This could be an interesting trend—how to add a very unique amenity to properties with the kind of seasonal (weather) you don’t get in Southern California.”
A visiting VIP, accustomed to luxury, has already raved about the new amenities, including the penthouse suite.
“That’s the proof in the pudding,” says Bell. “A lot of people say, ‘I can’t believe I’m in Wayland, Michigan.’”
The Evolution of Amenities
The earliest casinos were pure gambling halls where punters at fruit machines, ankle deep in sawdust, were lucky to get a shot and a beer.
It wasn’t until 1941 that entrepreneur Thomas Hull opened a hotel at the El Rancho in Las Vegas, designed to capture motorists from L.A. heading to Sin City. The Last Frontier followed suit, adding rooms, a dinner show and a dance floor. Operators were soon adding lounges, showrooms and other attractions to keep folks around—features now considered standard.
“The thinking was that providing all a guest could want would serve as a ‘moat’ to keep the guest from leaving and visiting the competition,” says Sal Semola, industry veteran and CEO of Gun Lake Casino in Wayland, Michigan.
In 1976, when Frank Rosenthal opened the Stardust race and sportsbook, the idea caught on fast.
“The competitive mindset as an operator was, ‘I wouldn’t want you to go over there to make a sports bet, possibly make a lay-down on tables or worse, get poached by a host—all missed revenue opportunities for my place,’” Semola says. Stardust “began the proliferation of race and sportsbooks in Las Vegas casinos and ultimately became a core amenity.”
The model shifted again in 1988, when Sheldon Adelson bought the Sands Hotel. “We were all excited by the deal,” says Semola, who worked at the Sands at the time. “Adelson was a visionary on so many fronts. His plan, even then, was to ultimately build two 3,000-room hotels conjoined by one huge casino.”
Eventually, that idea morphed into the Venetian, with its iconic canal and retail component. But first, Adelson built the Sands Expo and Convention Center. “A lot of people don’t know he used to bring Comdex, the forerunner to the Consumers Electronic Show, to Las Vegas. He saw the impact it had on the town, so his initial focus was the expo center, even before the hotel.
“That went against the grain of business norms of the time—it was controversial, almost sacrilegious. Some speculated this was the end of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which hosted conventions. Others said Adelson would lose his shirt.”
Needless to say, the LVCVA flourished, as did Adelson, and convention and meeting spaces became the next big core amenity.
Casinos continue to disrupt the existing model, introducing theme parks, golf courses, water features, cultural attractions and other entertainment, driven by evolving consumer demands. A complex like the Wawyé Oasis at Gun Lake “has the potential to become a core amenity in certain regions,” says Semola, particularly in four-season climates.
