Casino ready to welcome back socially-distanced gamblers
Poker was in the cards at Chances Casino Kelowna in February 2020. Then the pandemic hit.
In a bit of bad luck, or at least bad timing, the Springfield Road facility was gearing up exactly one year ago to offer live table games to go with slot machines, bingo, and betting on horse racing.
But the casino, like others across B.C., was ordered closed in mid-March due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Casinos have been shuttered ever since, though they have been allowed to briefly open before being closed again in other provinces.
“We’re hopeful that a dialogue is going to begin soon between the gaming industry and the province on a possible re-opening,” Chances owner Stan Walt said Wednesday.
For now, Walt is following the almost daily briefings given by provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry on the number of new cases as well as the rollout of the mass vaccination campaign.
He says it’s possible the gaming industry will simply find out one day, along with the public, that casinos are being allowed to re-open, but he hopes for something of a heads-up from the government.
“I’m hopeful they’ll use common sense and give us a bit of an advance notice, give us a target date,” he says. “Because these places are not going to open in an hour. At each casino, there’s a couple of hundred people involved, who need to be called back to work. And the B.C. Lottery Corporation’s own systems and operations need to be restarted.”
“It’s almost like opening a brand new business. It’s going to take two, three or even four weeks to re-start these operations when we are given the go-ahead,” he said.
In the past year, the casino has undergone substantial renovations, and there have been adaptations for the eventual reopening, whenever it is allowed.
The first thing Chances customers will notice is that slots have been spread throughout the building, each machine at least two metres from another. The wider spacing has necessitated the temporary suspension of bingo, which would have been problematic anyway since the game usually involves many people playing in close proximity to each other.
“Bingo has always been a big part of the lifeblood of Chances,” Walt says. “The necessity to provide two-metre distancing and reduced crowd capacity has forced us to put bingo on hold until we can safely offer it in the months to come.”
Pre-pandemic, Chances had an occupancy limit of more than 1,000 people. Walt expects that will be “drastically reduced” once permission to re-open is given.