Casino eyes million visitors a year
Published Thursday June 18th, 2009
Enterprise Greater Moncton touts city's economic success at annual breakfast
Metro Moncton's new casino is expected to draw upwards of a million visitors a year, create over 400 jobs and pump many millions of dollars into the local economy.
It will also help change New Brunswick from a "drive-through" province into a destination, developer Michael Novac told about 400 of Metro Moncton's business movers and shakers during a downtown breakfast meeting yesterday.
"The casino will benefit other businesses around it," he said.
Novac, president of the Sonco Group of Halifax, said the casino expects to draw roughly 845,000 visitors in its first year of operation and grow from there as it becomes more popular as a destination for bus tours, conventions and special events. The casino is now under construction near Magnetic Hill and is expected to open next spring.
The complex will include the casino, palladium and hotel/restaurant buildings connected together with such features as a 68-seat restaurant, spa, pool and gymnasium.
Novak said yesterday that developers kept the number of rooms to a rather low 128 so it would spread the benefits to other businesses around it. He said this is a different approach than is used in places like Las Vegas where individual casino complexes do all they can to capture and hold customers (and their money) for the entire length of their stay.
The $90-million casino is being built without government funding but the provincial government stands to get about $25 million a year from the casino's gaming revenue. The province's piece of the action was guaranteed when the Request For Proposals for the casino clearly stated that money from the gambling operations would be split 50-50 between the casino owner and the provincial government.
The situation is the same across the country with the exception of Saskatchewan and Ontario which give a small percentage to the municipalities.
Mayor George LeBlanc says it would be nice if the city could get some of that money and put it toward fixing roads or perhaps building a new downtown Metro Events Centre. The casino project promises to give the city about $1.62 million a year in property taxes, but LeBlanc says the responsibility still falls on the city to provide police, fire protection and other infrastructure to support it.
When it opens next spring, the casino complex will employ about 400 people, many of whom will be moving to Moncton. The palladium will include an entertainment complex capable of seating about 1,800 people but the seats will be removable to accommodate an even larger standing crowd for concerts and shows. The casino is partnering with a booking agency to bring in about 60 shows a year.
Novac said the casino will promote itself as a destination to tourists, convention planners and tour operators in Canada and especially in Maine, which, in turn, should help Metro Moncton. Other casinos, like the one in Halifax, regularly offer cut-rate bus tours to attract visitors on day trips.
The casino will be the first of its kind in New Brunswick and be complete with an iconic lighthouse tower as part of its design. He said Moncton was best suited for the casino because of it is a positive and forward-thinking progressive community that is investment friendly.
Novac was guest speaker yesterday as Enterprise Greater Moncton staged its ninth annual Community Development Breakfast, celebrating the city's ability to continue booming in the shadow of economic crisis.
The breakfast drew a full house of over 400 from Metro Moncton's business community. The event took on the theme of a television talk show hosted by Mark Crandall, complete with a Top 10 list poking some good-natured fun at our bilingual culture, the chocolate river and the number of Tim Hortons locations, while reminding everyone of this summer's big events like outdoor concerts by Bon Jovi and AC/DC.
The talk show theme was in keeping with EGM's new slogan of "Need help starting your business? Let's Talk."
Staff members of Enterprise Greater Moncton provided updates on the development organization's achievements in attracting new business and helping existing businesses grow.
Eric Pelletier, EGM's manager of business attraction, said 14 new companies have moved into town recently, creating 149 new jobs, but most growth is coming through existing companies that have created 550 new jobs.
While more economic challenges are expected through this year and next, Pelletier said most businesses are predicting growth in sales and employee numbers.
Metro Moncton has also seen an influx of new immigrants, especially from Korea.
Economic growth is also seen through major building projects like the casino, the courthouse, Riverview's Fundy Chocolate River Station and the Dieppe Aquatic Centre.
Thompson said the event applauded Metro Moncton's ability to maintain economic growth despite the recession that has hit so many other communities in North America, thanks mainly to our diversified economy.
"Things are still going very well. There's still a lot of optimism out there. Companies are still being innovative, they're still being competitive within their marketplace. And if we're doing well during the recession, when we start seeing the recessing fade away, our companies are going to be in an even better position than anyone else in the marketplace."
EGM chief executive officer John Thompson said Enterprise Greater Moncton is stepping up its mission to draw new business into the local economy and work with franchises to make sure they find the right location and the right people to move ahead quickly with their plans.
Over the next year, EGM will continue to focus on business retention and expansion.
Thompson predicts 80 per cent of the growth will come from existing businesses and 20 per cent from new companies moving in.
And with unemployment in the three to five per cent range, Thompson says a shortage of workers remains a real challenge.
"We have to make sure we continue to attract quality workers into our community and that's something that we'll always have to work on, and our companies are going to have to remain competitive when it comes to salaries.
"The days of paying somebody $8 an hour just doesn't work any more, especially when you get skilled workers. There's going to be pressures in the next six to eight months when you have competition from Saint John Point Lepreau II, a new refinery, that will put pressure on the workers here trades people professionals and engineers, and we want to make sure that the people here remain competitive."
Disabled
Search Articles
More CE Network Sites & Partners:
Comments (5)
All comments are subject to the site Terms of Use. For a full commenting tutorial click here.
Our editorial team relies on filtering technology and our visitor community to identify inappropriate comments. In the event that a site user has submitted offensive content that has evaded our filter, please select the option to Flag As Inappropriate presented within the comment. Thank you for helping to keep this site clean.
We have VLTs all over the place in this area, there are thousands of online gambling sites that offer everything from casino games to sports betting to bingo. People nowadays have easy access to extremely convenient ways to gamble, why would the presence of a casino make things so much worse?
It's like saying, if a Denny's opened up in Moncton around all the existing fast-food joints everywhere, levels of obesity would SUDDENLY INCREASE.
I don't get it.
Anonymous Anonymous, Can you keep an alchoolic away from the beer store or a drug addict from a dealer ??
I remember when they had those Lucky 7 machines floating around Alibi's way back of course, or at the Lantern in the Brae amongs many other place like 7-11's, I remember watching people drop their pay checks in those,20.00 bills at a time and they's spend so much that cashing in 8000 credits would still of left them in the hole so they had to keep going and would end up leaving the place serching their pockets for a cab fair to get home.
It affected some families of those gamblers that couldn't stay away,so you thing a casino is equal to a Denny's ?? I don't. At Denny's you pay 25 bucks you stuff your mouth,(with the family) then you go home with the rest of your pay and your family too.
Myself I'd rather be Obese than a gambler.
I agree with you, s. king, that there are addicted people who gamble. The need help, and it is available.
However, people suffer from all kinds of addictions... many less visible than gambling. We cannot rid our world of everything that has its addicts. We can offer them help.