New Hampshire’s The Nash gives back to the community in a big way. By David McKee
Nestled in the city of Nashua, in the southernmost part of New Hampshire, The Nash is the Granite State’s biggest and newest casino. It also aims to be the best and most charitable. One intriguing facet of New Hampshire law is that all casino operators must partner with area charities and share the wealth. Casino monies must also be disbursed to the state’s Education Trust Fund. Table games pay a 35 percent levy to charity, VLTs about a third of that and a like amount comes from historical horse racing machines or HHRs.
In its first year of operation – it debuted in March 2024 – The Nash has engendered over $17 million for nonprofits and another $14 million for the Trust Fund, making it the Granite State’s leading charitable-gaming provider. It occupies 130,000 square feet and was developed at a cost of $250 million. Add 700 employees and a $22 million payroll, and you have a sizable economic impact on the Nashua area.
Rather than being built from the ground up, The Nash makes creative use of a former Sears department store. Sitting at the heart of the Pheasant Lane Mall, The Nash is arguably its anchor tenant – a growing trend in the United States, as casinos become more adaptive to their surroundings. Also, due to a quirk of location, if you fell out the front door of The Nash (or were 86’d from it), you’d land in neighboring Massachusetts, from whence many Nash customers come.
The Nash is the creation of far-flung, Las Vegas-based ECL Entertainment. A nexus of former Station Casinos executives, ECL owns casinos and taverns from California to Kentucky … and the East Coast, as The Nash demonstrates. Nash General Manager Eric Althaus is also a Station veteran, so that made a good place to start …
How long have you been with The Nash and what career path brought you here?
I started in November of 2024, so a little over a year and a half. I’ve been in gaming for 35 years. I broke in back in ’91, in Iowa, and then I just kind of transitioned to opening new casinos in new states. That road led me here. I worked with a couple of people at ECL in the past. One of the owners, Marc Falcone, used to be the CFO of Station Casinos out of Vegas, and my COO was also the COO of Station. So I was with Gun Lake Casino Resort, out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, for about eight years. I spent many years with Station, both there and at Station Kansas City [now Ameristar Kansas City]. Knowing how Station Casinos operated, I had a trust in those two people to make the move here.
How is the new venue working out?
Pretty well. There’s been gaming in this state, New Hampshire, for many years. But the industry has definitely changed over the last two years. The interesting thing for us, as we opened in March of last year, the law was just HHR machines. And there were set maximum wagers for the table games and the HHRs. So when the rules changed in July of last year, that allowed so many different changes. It’s the first time I’ve opened a casino that I had to pretty much completely change it in the first year and add VLTs, changing the limits—so it was a lot to get to where we are today. But we’ve definitely seen some major increases in traffic and revenue and charities as of Q4 of last year.
What is the importance of having VLTs?
You’re bringing in games that are world leaders,games that just don’t live in the HHR box. So having some of the best-known themes and cabinets come into our property, that has definitely assisted with overall recognition. If I go to this casino and this market, and they have all these games that people love to play, having them in our property makes us more accessible to people when they think, “I want to play this game. Now I can go to The Nash.”
What is the comparative popularity of VLTs versus HHRs?
We were very proactive in getting the VLTs onto our property. right now we’re about 70 percent VLTs and 30 percent HHR.
What is your gambling inventory at present?
When we opened we had a little over 1,000 electric gaming machines. Those were primarily HHRs and some ETGs. We’re up to 1,150 now, so we’ve added to our footprint. Similarly in table games, we started out with 34 and now we’re up to 37.
What have been the best-performing periods for the casino so far?
By far, it was Q4 of last year. That’s because so many changes were started in late September, and truly came into fruition in October and November. Also you’re getting out of the summertime. In New England, it’s not a long period that it’s nice weather outside so people took their vacations and we had just opened, so we truly didn’t know who our guest was. We had a lot of trial: coming in to see the property and what was going on.
But I would say in October-November, that’s when we started to gain an understanding of who our patrons were and what they wanted when they were here. Just to understand from an overall entertainment value what we could offer them, to make sure that when they came here they enjoyed us. Obviously you’ve been around the industry as well, so when it comes tax season you’ve definitely had an influx of people. We’ve seen that continuation from Q4 hit into January and February, into the heart of tax season in March. We’ve experienced some pretty good business over the last six months.
What are the primary amenities you offer?
Obviously, we have the gaming. We have 19 poker tables as well. We have a two-story sports book, partnered with DraftKings. It’s almost like a movie theater: There’s layers of viewing to the biggest screen in the New Hampshire area, which is great. It brings in tons of additional traffic. They’re very big into their home teams, so when the Boston Celtics are playing or the other teams are playing, it’s definitely more energetic. Even March, with all the conference tournaments hitting, we’ve seen a lot of people come to that space as well.
We do have a small entertainment area as well where we have free entertainment on Fridays and Saturdays. We do trivia on Tuesdays, so that has been pretty successful. We have multiple restaurants. Our staple is Proper Chophouse & Cocktails. This is our fine dining and also great steaks, great seafood, a very good vibe with the bar scene that we have there as well.
We have an Asian restaurant, Lucky Lantern Noodle House. Since we’re so close to Boston, we do get a lot of Asian play coming to the area. We have mini-baccarat tables and pai gow games, so we have a pretty good offering on the table games side. Now we have a restaurant that caters to that type of food. We have a three-meal restaurant, Woodlands Café, so we have breakfast, lunch and dinner in that space. Our sports bar has your pizza, your wings, your hamburgers and nachos, and all the stuff you want to get there. So it’s a pretty wide range of menu items to go with the entertainment altogether.
The only other thing that we have downstairs, we have TopGolf. We have four bays of simulated golf and it’s the full suite. So it has golf, hockey, baseball, football and some of the other fun games that go with that.
Did you see a discernible bounce in business from the New England Patriots’ playoff run?
Absolutely. Even the Boston Red Sox. They didn’t start off great but, as they got momentum in early summer and going in towards the playoffs, they truly support their teams. We didn’t know what the Patriots were going to do this year. With them having a good season it definitely made us have better Sundays—and Mondays and Thursdays, as they did get a good number of prime-time games through the year, so it was definitely good energy. As they got into the playoffs, obviously that was electric. Unfortunately, they didn’t play as well in the [Super Bowl], but even still we were packed. The second they won the AFC championship, we had a good number of tickets to watch the big game. They were sold out immediately.
How much of your clientele is drawn from Massachusetts, as opposed to New Hampshire?
It’s more than 50 percent. We’re positioned right on the state line. If you walk out of our main entrance, there’s a white line that’s on the sidewalk that shows how close we are to Massachusetts. There’s more people that live in the suburbs of Boston than in New Hampshire, so geographically there’s more people that come. But not as much as someone would think. It’s still a good balance between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
For those unfamiliar with New Hampshire’s gaming industry, how does it differ from other states?
The charitable angle is the main driver. I’ve worked in a lot of states and to have the charity component is pretty spectacular. Every month we have an event where all the charities that were part of the donations for the month before come in. We have a little party and a little ceremony. We do a check presentation and some pictures. Sometimes elected officials come as well, to see where the funds are going — but to see and talk to the people, and understand where those funds are going and how many people they’re touching.
It’s one of the best days of the month because it’s all about happiness and seeing the fruits of labor. Even for the team members on property to see that see this is just not being written off and going to someone: They’re getting to determine where those funds are going. For us to be a part of that is pretty spectacular.
With the state, the current max number of days that any charity could have was 10 days. There’s a bill that is going to reduce that to seven. But we proactively reduced that to five days. Our checks have been the biggest in the state. We have produced the most revenue. So we’re trying to touch as many charities as possible. So we made the determination to reduce that, to talk to more charities. Back before we opened, we realized we were going to have something special at The Nash. We knew that some of these offerings to charity were going to be rather large. We created a committee that has many components of the operation, including corporate. We meet every single month to vet all the charities that had requested to be a partner with us. We created these pillars that are very important to us. They touch on first responders, police, fire. We touch on education, food and homeless, on many different things that are important to us. Then at these monthly meetings we determine who our charity partners are going to be – to make sure that we’re touching things that are important and impactful to us. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not touching a charity that’s a couple of hundred of miles away in a northern part of New Hampshire. We’re pretty well-rounded to make sure we have a footprint that touches many different areas of the state.
Do you have any wishes for the state legislature of policy changes you’d like to see?
We’re going to adhere to the laws and the rules that are in front of us. Because there have been so many changes in a very short time frame, having a static market and understanding that the rules aren’t constantly going to change allows us to truly understand what our patrons need. We had to completely change the operation within one year. That’s pretty unheard-of. Now those changes have been positive. I absolutely love the fact that we have very progressive and understanding government to understand the industry and make these changes.
Does being in a former retail space present any infrastructural challenges or benefits?
It actually has a little bit of both. Since we did take over a space, some of our property has been here for many years. We’re taking on some of the unknown challenges that come with that. Typically, as you get into November and December, a lot of people are spending their discretionary income for presents and at holiday parties. The fact that we are part of a shopping mall definitely assisted us. We had a little bit more foot traffic. Maybe it was a couple: One person goes to the mall and wants to shop, and one person didn’t want to. So now they’re going to go to the casino and watch a game or listen to music or partake in a table game. Whatever it is, we do have a very well-rounded space for entertainment.
So we did see a little bit more business in November and December than I’m used to. Since I’ve been around for decades, it’s a hit or a miss. The more history you have with your operation to understand the highs and the lows, and what you need to do to operate within that space, it was definitely a nice surprise to see how we performed.
What are The Nash’s plans for the near future and the long term?
We’re still learning. We’re trying to get as much data as possible. We’re documenting all the successes and the areas for opportunity. As we get new people to come in or retain the people that have been coming here since opening, what do they want? What do they need when they’re here? Truly, we focus on the guest experience and hit on training as much possible. Try to give every tool imaginable to the team, so that they have the skills and ability to handle the guests when they come. So that every person, when they walk out these doors, they feel good about the property and want to come and see us again.
We’re a casino. We have the same games, the same food as other outlets. So we try to make it special and create those relationships with people so that, when someone comes, they’re coming to see Team Member X because they made me feel good. Or Team Member Y because, you know what, they gave me a good experience and I want to come back and experience it again. It truly is understanding and continuing to build on the successes that we’ve had so far in Year One.
Casino Life Magazine would like to thank General Manager Eric Althaus for taking time out of his busy schedule for this interview and The Nash PR Team for all their help and assistance with this interview.
*** This original exclusve feature interview was originally published in Casino Life Magazine May 2026 edition Issue 188 Volume 22***
