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HomeNewsArchivesCASINO OPENING STILL ON TRACK FOR DECEMBER

CASINO OPENING STILL ON TRACK FOR DECEMBER

Despite delays in the openings of the Divi Carina Bay Resort and the V.I. Casino Training School, the Treasure Bay Inc. casino is still scheduled to open in early December — about a year after it received its gaming license.
Last week the projected date for completion of the renovated Divi Carina Bay Resort was moved to Oct. 15 from September. The remodeled resort will have 150 rooms and is key to the opening of the casino.
The opening date for the Casino Training School, organized by the Department of Tourism in order to supply Treasure Bay with at least 80 percent of its work force, was pushed back from Aug. 2 to early September.
Even with those fits and starts, Treasure Bay executive vice president Barbara Shattles said, a December opening remains the goal. Treasure Bay V.I. Corp., a subsidiary of Mississippi-based Treasure Bay, was granted a casino license last Dec. 2.
"We’re working closely with the Department of Tourism" to prepare casino employees, Shattles said. "I think the island is quite excited."
While actual gaming training hasn‘t begun, Labor Commissioner-designate Sonia Jacobs Dow said, a four-week customer-service training seminar began last week for those people who have enrolled in the Casino Career Program.
It is expected that more than 150 casino workers will be needed once Treasure Bay opens its 10,000-square-foot gaming facility. The casino is to house 275 slot machines and 12 table games in a two-story building across from the resort.
"They’ve got a lot of work to do," Shattles said of organizing the training school, "but we’re confident they’ll be prepared."
Meanwhile, she said that Treasure Bay, which operates a 66,000-square-foot casino in Biloxi, Miss., has already started marketing the St. Croix casino and resort.
"We will have joint marketing with Carina Bay," she said. "But the casino will also be doing its separate marketing. There will be casino packages with other hotels. We’re not just tied into Carina Bay."
The main reason for that, she said, is that the visitor demand is anticipated for more rooms than the 150 at the Divi Carina Bay.
"A lot of people will choose a place for their vacation that has good gambling," Shattles said. "It will be another group of people to market the island to."
The V.I. Casino and Resort Control Act of 1995 was established to encourage hotel room construction and renovation on St. Croix, as well as to provide more jobs.
The last major hotel development on the island was the Carambola Beach Resort, just prior to Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Prior to the storm, St. Croix had 26 hotels and 1,074 rooms. Currently, there are 21 hotels with about 895 rooms.

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