The Casino Ballroom Was Supposed to Close This Month. It Didn't.

If you've searched for Hampton Beach news anytime this year, you've probably run into some version of the same headline: demolition on the Casino Ballroom starts in September, timed to begin right after the Seafood Festival clears out. It showed up in the planning documents last fall. It got picked up by engineering trade press and gambling industry newsletters. Some of those write-ups are still circulating as recently as this summer.

It's also six months out of date.

The ballroom's own marketing office corrected the record back in March, and if you drive past 169 Ocean Boulevard this month, you'll see the evidence yourself. There's a full calendar of shows still booked, running past Labor Day and past the Seafood Festival, all the way to a season closer on September 30. The wrecking ball everyone keeps writing about isn't coming this year. It got pushed back a full season, and the reason why says something about how this stretch of Ocean Boulevard actually changes hands.

What the Planning Documents Said, and What Changed

Last November, Hampton's Planning Board unanimously approved Lupoli Companies' redevelopment of the Casino Ballroom site: a $600 million project bringing a 208-room hotel, 99 luxury condominiums, a nearly-doubled 3,500-seat entertainment venue, and a charitable gaming casino to the 4.5-acre parcel. At the time, the planning documents named a target: demolition beginning in September 2026, deliberately scheduled after the annual Seafood Festival so this year's crowds could get one more pass through the boardwalk before construction fences went up.

That date stuck. It appeared in coverage through the winter and into spring, and versions of it are still being repeated by outlets that never circled back to check.

Then the plan moved. Reporting in March quoted Andrew Herrick, the Casino Ballroom's marketing director, walking the timeline forward by a full year:

"We're 100% going to be open in 2027. Our 100th year will rock."

That's not a rounding error on a construction schedule. It's an entire extra operating season, the ballroom's 99th, that nobody outside the venue's own office had confirmed until a local reporter asked directly.

The Ninety-Ninth Season Is Still Playing

The proof isn't a press release. It's the calendar. This year's lineup opened in April with Melissa Etheridge and Clint Black, ran through August with the String Cheese Incident, KC & the Sunshine Band, and Air Supply, and closes out on September 30 with W.A.S.P. and KK's Priest.

A venue slated for demolition the week after a mid-September festival doesn't book acts for the last night of the month. Whoever is still running the old September timeline hasn't checked the box office, because the box office is the tell. The building that was supposed to be rubble by now is instead finishing out a full concert season in a room that first opened in 1927, on a stage that's hosted Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bing Crosby in one era and The Who and Janis Joplin in another.

The reprieve matters for anyone who treats late September as the quiet part of the calendar. It isn't, not this year.

The Boardwalk's Other Handoff

The ballroom isn't the only Ocean Boulevard institution that changed hands this year without changing its footprint. A few blocks down, Playland Arcade sold in January, ending 53 years of ownership by Jack Kennedy and his late brother Frank, who bought the arcade in 1971 after growing up working summers at Funarama, their father and uncle's arcade from 1959.

Frank died in January 2025. Jack, now 86, decided it was time to retire, and the arcade sold for $4 million, including the parking lot behind it on B Street, according to town records reported by the Union Leader. The buyer: Sal Lupoli, the same developer behind the ballroom project next door.

Kennedy had nine other offers on the table. He picked Lupoli specifically because Lupoli committed to keeping Playland running as-is, games and staff included. "He plans to maintain the business in the same form as it is now," Kennedy told the paper, "and he's happy to bring back all the workers that we have hired."

Two of the boardwalk's oldest fixtures, under new ownership within months of each other, and both landed on the same answer: keep it running before you touch it. That's not the pattern a neighborhood usually gets when a single developer starts buying up its landmarks.

What This Means If You're Planning Around It

Locals treat the Seafood Festival, now in its 37th year and running September 11 through 13 this year, as the unofficial marker for when Hampton Beach exhales. Cirque du Hampton Beach takes the circus tent on September 5, marking the Boston Circus Guild's tenth year producing the show, and the Annual LED Light and Fire Show closes the season on September 19 with the same guild's fire performers back on the sand.

Normally, once those close, the boardwalk quiets down fast. This year, it won't quite. The ballroom's still selling tickets past the festival, past the fire show, all the way to that September 30 date. That means the traffic and parking patterns tied to a sold-out Casino Ballroom night, already a known headache on Ocean Boulevard during peak weekends, are going to show up on a random Tuesday or Wednesday in late September the way they used to only show up in July.

If your routine involves timing errands or dinner reservations around when the boulevard clears out, this year that window opens later than it has in past Septembers. And if you've been telling people the ballroom's last summer is happening right now, you can tell them it's actually next year. The 100th season, the one everyone should actually be marking a calendar for, lands in 2027.

For now, the building everyone assumed would be gone by Halloween is still lit up on a Wednesday night in September, and the arcade down the block is still handing out tickets at the same prize counter it's used for half a century. Neither one asked permission to stay open longer than the headlines said they would.

Keeping track of what's actually changing on the ground, not just what got announced six months ago, is most of what local expertise is. If you're weighing a move to Hampton or just want a straight answer about what's really happening on your street before you make a decision, Cheryl Grant can walk you through it. Start with a Get Your Instant Home Valuation and take it from there.