Sudbury To Get a New Casino
Sudbury is in store for exciting things, after Gateway Casinos and Entertainment went public with their intention to build a casino in Dario Zulich's new entertainment complex.
Zulich's plans involve a whole redevelopment of the area, including an events center and arena, hotels, a motorsports park and other developments alongside. Gateway, which last month took over the Northern Ontario gaming operations from OLG, has revealed plans to add to this by building a $60 million premier casino and entertainment property in the planned redevelopment.
The new casino will be in line with other premier resorts around Canada, including the Fallsview Casino Resort in Ontario, Alberta's luxury River Cree Resort, River Rock Casino Resort in British Columbia - and will be able to compete with the growing popularity of Canada's online casinos industry, which sees an all-time high demand across the entire country.
The Proposed Casino Site
The new casino has yet to receive municipal approval, and more importantly, the city hasn't revealed the arena's planned location, although the council will be discussing it later this month.
According to Carrie Kormos, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Gateway Casinos, no final decisions will be made about the location of the new casino until the city announces the location of the events center. However, she did reveal the preference of the company "to put these two major investments on the same piece of property."
A Boom to Sudbury's Economy
Zulich has argued that the Kingsway site in Sudbury is ideal for this development and will be able to accommodate the major sports and entertainment district being planned. The $60 million casino facility offers the opportunity to create around 250 jobs for people working on the site, in the shape of restaurant staff, bar staff and on the "spectacular gaming floor", including pit bosses and casino dealers for table games such as roulette and poker.
The entire complex will create more than 1000 jobs - and that's before the number of construction workers are factored in.
Having the Gateway development and the arena on the same site will create a significant boost to the local economy, of which Sudbury is in dire need. A significant player in Canada's mining industry, and with a population of more than 161,000, Sudbury's economy has diversified in recent years. This development would allow the Sudbury economy to diversify even further, by offering a new and significant industry in the area.
"By putting the event center and this casino together, we achieve critical mass," explained Zulich. "That critical mass is going to release an economic vision, or energy, and the spin-off effect is going to be unbelievable. We're witnessing a brand new industry being born in Sudbury and you don't get to see that too often."
The companies plan to be ready to begin construction as soon as all the necessary approvals are granted, and Gateway expects that a new casino would be ready to open by spring 2020.
