Ground broken for casino
Design complementary to city’s gateway, casino official says
Construction of the city’s new casino is officially underway after a ceremonial ground breaking Wednesday.
Local dignitaries and senior executives of the OLG and Great Canadian Gaming turned sod to mark the casino’s beginnings.
Chuck Keeling, spokesman for the private company that’s building the casino, said construction of Shorelines Casino Peterborough should be finished by mid to late 2018.
It took about nine months to complete the casino in Belleville, he said, which is a similar facility in terms of size and scale to Peterborough’s.
Keeling wouldn’t say how much the project is going to cost, but according to a city staff report it’s expected to total $49 million.
The exterior design of the roughly 30,000-square-foot facility was revealed at the event.
It’s not the garish casino of old that some people might think, Keeling said.
“This is a very modern, contemporary facility and we actually think this will be highly complementary as the gateway to the city – that you’re not going to assume this is immediately a casino once it’s done,” Keeling said.
As for environmental concerns at the site, the company has gone through a “wealth” of assessments, Keeling said. Some are still ongoing and the company is primarily working with the Otonabee Region Conservation Authority.
“We’re very confident that we’ll be receiving all of those approvals ... I think it’s fair to say we wouldn’t be having a ground breaking if we weren’t confident that we will be jumping through all of those hoops imminently,” Keeling said.
If any of the assessments don’t turn up the results the company is hoping for, it’ll meet any of the needed conditions, Keeling added.
Ontario Lottery and Gaming slot machines from the Slots at Kawartha Downs will be transported to the new casino when it’s ready.
The 150 employees currently working at Kawartha Downs will also move to the new casino. Shorelines Casino Peterborough will hire an additional 150 staff as well.
That’s good news for the community, Mayor Daryl Bennett said.
So is the cash injection the casino will provide to the city. It’s expected to generate at least $3.2 million in shared revenues for the city, a city staff report stated.
“There’s a whole bunch of spinoffs that are good for us,” Bennett said.
But not everyone feels the same.
Local activist Roy Brady doesn’t support the casino. In fact, he’s taking the city to court over a city council in-camera meeting that happened in November 2015. That’s when the site of the casino was determined, yet the meeting shouldn’t have been private. A hearing date for the case still hasn’t been set.
Brady doesn’t think construction should start until the case has been settled. But he’s not surprised it’s going ahead anyway.
“They’re doing the same thing they’ve been doing all along, including the PDI sale, they just plough ahead until somebody stops them, that’s been a theme,” said Brady.
He said his main concern is that city never asked the community whether they wanted a casino or not.
“They just never bothered doing that,” Brady said.
Meanwhile, Bennett thinks building a casino in Peterborough is the right move.
“I think at the end of the day, the right decision was made for the right reasons,” Bennett said.
A new hotel is also in the works next to the casino. It’ll be a six-storey Hampton Inn, with 100 rooms. The inn will be built where the former Visitor’s Centre was located on the corner of Crawford Drive and The Parkway. That’s expected to cost $17 million, according to a city staff report. There was no word on when construction of the hotel will begin.