Casino

The Twin River slot parlor said yesterday its lenders extended a financing arrangement with the Lincoln gambling venue until Jan. 31.

The slot parlor will suspend interest payments to some of its lenders until then, an action Twin River said is needed to conserve its finances.

The slot parlor’s owner, UTGR Inc., has negotiated for months with its lenders to rework $577 million in financing tied to the Lincoln venue and four Colorado racetracks owned by its parent company.

The parent company, BLB Investments LLC, in 2005 bought the aging Lincoln Park greyhound racing track in Rhode Island and four racetracks in Colorado for $464 million from Wembley PLC.

BLB, a consortium of Kerzner International Ltd., the Waterford Group and Starwood Capital Group, then sunk $225 million into renovating Lincoln Park, rechristening the venue as Twin River about 18 months ago.

Negotiations over the debts came after the slot parlor’s owners missed a loan payment in March, prompting collection efforts by contractors who worked on the building’s reconstruction.

The lenders and the slot parlor’s owners entered into a pact, known as a forbearance agreement, which allows a borrower to work out payment plans with its lenders and creditors. The agreement expired Aug. 29 without a new deal being reached.

Twin River now has until the end of January to restructure its debt payments and generate more profits.

“What the extension gives us is some valuable time,” said Patti Doyle, Twin River’s spokeswoman.

The extension will remain in effect until Jan. 31 as long as the slot parlor is able to satisfy a series of monthly financial requirements, Twin River said in a statement released to The Journal.

Doyle, however, declined to detail the “benchmarks” that Twin River must reach to keep the agreement in place.

The state has been closely monitoring the operations since earlier this year.

Gambling is the third-largest source of state income. Out of every dollar lost into one of the video-lottery terminals at Twin River, the state gets slightly more than 60 cents. If expectations play out, that would translate into $254.4 million from Twin River alone for the state this year.

In early summer, state officials hired two international consulting firms to follow the slot parlor’s operations.

The Willkie Farr & Gallagher law firm and the Blackstone Group, a leveraged-buyout firm, began working for the state in late June or early July, according to Gary Sasse, “to give advice on restructuring issues and other contingencies as they might develop.”

Sasse is the director of the state Department of Revenue.

He and other top officials in the Carcieri administration have met periodically with Twin River representatives, but have said little about the nature of the talks.

Yesterday, Sasse declined to specify what suggestions the consultants may have given Twin River to this point about its operations.

“Constructive discussions” with Twin River’s representatives are continuing, Sasse said.

A Twin River delegation met with House Speaker William J. Murphy in June, offering at least $500 million to the state if it would reduce its cut of revenue from the facility’s 4,751 video-lottery terminals from more than 61 percent to 25 percent.

The state has so far declined.

The new deadline falls during a period when the legislature is back in session. A spokesman for Murphy said he had not talked recently to representatives of Twin River, and did not know of any terms or conditions of the extension that hinged on legislative action.

pgrimald@projo.com