South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Brash attitudes at Hard Rock?
Casino makes fix after Sun Sentinel story
At 11:30 Thursday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood, more than a dozen people lined the front bar at the interactive sports café PLA, many of them strangers, seated next to each other, drinks in hand, faces uncovered, yammering away in care-free conversation.
There was no edict from staff that you must be dining to get a drink, as the bartender will tell you at Council Oak. Guests were not funneled into plastic chutes, as they are at the bar at the Hard Rock Café.
At PLA, it was easy to forget the pandemic raging across the state, the governor’s ban on drinking in bars, the county mayor’s 11 p.m. curfew or the Hard Rock’s property-wide safety protocols. The bartender was wearing a mask, but PLA sure felt like 2019 again.
It has been six weeks since Seminole Gaming reopened the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood and the Guitar Hotel with new rules on masks, sanitation and social distancing designed to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. It was a gamble: Could the glittering resort, nine months after its $1.5 billion remodel, create a safe atmosphere for what it branded “good, clean fun”?
It has been a work in progress. On Saturday, in response to the posting of this story at SunSentinel.com Friday night, Seminole Gaming enacted new mask rules at Hard Rock Casino properties in Florida. Patrons who are permitted to lower their masks while eating, drinking or smoking will no longer be able to walk around the casino property while doing so, a practice that frequently brought unmasked strangers together, the Sun Sentinel found.
The new rule took effect immediately at Hard Rock Hollywood and all other Seminole Gaming casinos across the state, including Seminole Classic in Hollywood, Seminole Casino Coconut Creek and Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa.
At the same time, Hard Rock Hollywood closed PLA through the weekend. The future of the restaurant will be discussed in a meeting of casino officials and PLA ownership on Monday.
Since the reopening, the Hard Rock Casino and the Guitar Hotel have generated 19 complaints from the public via Broward County’s 311 hotline, where callers have reported nearly 1,900 COVID-19 rules violations at other area businesses. Among casino properties, next on the list are the much smaller Big Easy Casino in Hallandale Beach with six complaints and the Isle Casino in Pompano Beach with five.
The county makes the complaints public on an online dashboard that debuted several weeks ago, which includes the names of
businesses, whether the issue was resolved and if warnings or citations were issued.
Visits to the sprawling Hard Rock property this week found plenty of environments that seemed to offer a safe night out, but they could only be accessed by navigating a minefield of reckless behavior on the casino floor.
“It was beautiful,” Aventura resident Nelda Marquez said of her meal with friends at Council Oak, before acknowledging concern about reaching her car in the garage. “We are going straight out and we’re walking around the side [of the casino floor]. Too many masks not on, not on right, out there.”
Operating an entertainment venue that draws a combustible demographic mix of young and older people in an indoor setting has only become more challenging as COVID-19 cases surge.
On the day Hard Rock properties reopened, June 12, Florida’s Department of Health reported a then daily record 1,902 new cases of COVID-19, along with 29 deaths. On Friday, July 24, the state announced 12,444 new cases and 135 deaths, as Florida has become a new epicenter for the virus.
Safe and sound?
The Hard Rock and other Seminole Gaming properties — Seminole Classic in Hollywood and Seminole Casino Coconut Creek — reopened with a program dubbed Safe and Sound, which included mandatory masks for staff and guests, temperature checks, Plexiglas barriers at gaming tables and hundreds of unplugged slot machines. All three properties are supposed to operate at 50% capacity.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida is a sovereign entity but coordinated with state officials on its reopening rules. None of the 19 complaints to the county will result in citations — there have been 85 issued across the county so far — due to the tribe’s autonomous status.
On Thursday night, many slot machines sat idle, not all by design, as crowds wandered the floor, clumps of strangers forming among displays of dead rock stars.
Most in the crowd, even the young and immortal, seemed to make a goodfaith effort to stay masked.
One gentleman, standing among the slot machines with his mask lowered, was approached by a casino staff member, who corrected him.
However, the Hard Rock then was allowing guests to go without a mask when they are eating, drinking or smoking (for those who consider the virus not efficient enough), and they could do so while walking. This created unnerving scenes of a guest, cigarette and drink in hand, blowing smoke onto unmasked strangers around him.
Many of those who filed complaints with the county seemed unaware that the tribe had no rule against going unmasked in these situations. Others considered it a distinction without a difference.
“The casino may be operated by the Seminoles and under their jurisdiction, but that doesn’t make it any less of a public health risk. This is a disaster waiting to happen,” one caller said.
Others cited a lack of social distancing — illustrated just after midnight Friday morning in a line of more than a dozen people seeking to-go cocktails at The Bol restaurant — and concerns about the property being over 50% capacity.
“Believe me, we have been constantly way over capacity, on the evening shift especially,” said one employee, who asked to remain anonymous.
Seminole Gaming spokesman Gary Bitner said the tribe monitors the complaints on the Broward County dashboard.
Remember the rules
Hard Rock staff scrutinize guests on arrival, departure and while they are inside to make sure masks are being worn, that capacity does not exceed 50% and that social distancing takes place, Bitner said.
“Casinos reopened with operations in place to enforce social distancing through the use of alternating slot machines and the installation of Plexiglas dividers at gaming tables. Tables at restaurants are positioned to force social distancing,” he said. “Team members are trained to enforce proper use of masks and will ask guests to leave if they refuse to comply.”
The Hard Rock recently added a recurring audio reminder of the rules that is played on speakers throughout the property.
Regarding the situation at PLA, Bitner said the bar is among the outside retail and food-and-beverage tenants who are required to follow Seminole Gaming’s Safe and Sound protocols. Managers of these businesses received multiple training sessions on the new rules and were provided with detailed, written guides, he said.
Some complaints filed with the county, by people who said they were employees, cited positive coronavirus cases among coworkers. Bitner could provide no numbers on positive cases but said staff who are sick or may have been exposed are required to selfquarantine. Contact tracing is also done, he said.
One cocktail waitress, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was aware of one co-worker who tested positive and that the Hard Rock was aggressive in its response. Everyone who came in contact with the person had to be tested or self-quarantine, she said.
“They’re making sure everyone is completely safe,” she said. Other casinos she has worked at “just care about the money… Here, they actually care about the guests.”