OXFORD — The Planning Board on Thursday night approved plans to add a hotel and additional floor space to Oxford Casino.

Civil engineer Robert Berry of Main-Land Development Consultants in Livermore Falls told the board that this project continues with the original plan to develop the south side of the gambling house on Route 26.

Berry said the original building will not be modified.

“The building footprint is the same as what we proposed before,” Berry said.

David Rudzenski, a principal partner of R2Architects in Voorhees, N.J., presented a sketch of the expansion.

“The project includes a four-story section that is the hotel,” Rudzenski said. “The first floor is basically a public area, and it’s going to be attached to the south side of the building. The first floor is about 34,000 square feet. It consists primarily of public area, which is going to be the hotel lobby, and we have a small casino expansion.

“We’re expanding two existing restaurants that are in the property now, and we’re having a third restaurant that we tentatively called the Oxford Pub,” he said. “There’s also a multipurpose room, that can be used for various functions, as well as public circulation areas.”

The second to the fourth floors will have roughly 106 guest rooms and some suites. The hotel will have its own dedicated entrance a short distance from the casino entrance.

“The building will not be floodlit, but we would do some highlighting of vertical elements, instead of up, it would be shooting down, so there would be no light shooting up into the sky,” Rudzenski said.

Berry addressed issues raised at the board’s meeting a month ago when the project was first presented.

“You asked about a market study,” Berry said. “There wasn’t one available. Informally, we suggest that the casino has a lot of people coming through it, and there’s probably business for both. We don’t see that as a problem.

“An audience member asked about traffic at the Rabbit Valley Road, and how sometimes some patrons don’t stop when they leave at that point, so we are suggesting to double up on the stop signs and make them bigger,” he said.

Fire Chief Wayne Jones asked about firetrucks being able to pull in and turn around, and developers have provided that, Berry said.

The developers assured the board the new project would be child-friendly.

“We will be providing (a pathway) from the hotel entrance, and through the hotel lobby, and to the restaurants and to the multipurpose room for anyone under 21,” Rudzenski said, “so the casino will be segregated from that public area so you can bring children, (who) can stay in the hotel and eat in the restaurants, and they will obviously be kept out of the casino.”

The casino is building a new sidewalk from the buildings to the road, but there is no current plan to make a crosswalk across Route 26.

“Was it your intent to come here tonight to get an approval?” Planning Board Chairman Stuart Davis asked Berry.

“We’d like to,” Berry said.

Davis said he didn’t attend the meeting last month when the plan was first presented, and asked if he might have more time to study it.

Interim Town Manager Rodney Smith replied, “We tabled it once already.”

“Do we need a public hearing on this?” Davis asked.

“This is the same concept of what we originally voted on in the first place, when the hotel came into town,” Smith said. “It’s just that the hotel instead of being on one side, it’s on the other. It’s all been approved — the expansions and everything in the original plan. It’s just that they have to come in with each expansion.”

Don Thayer motioned to approve the plan; Denise Landsperg seconded it and the board voted to approve it.

Developers are waiting for approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection before they can break ground, which they hope will be no later than August.