Nj Casino Opening

Update: Governor Phil Murphy announced on June 22 that New Jersey casinos can reopen at 25% capacity from July 2, in time for the Fourth of July weekend. This comes as part of a new executive order permitting indoor gatherings of up to 100 persons or 25% of a room’s capacity. Gov. Murphy added that casino visitors who do not comply with the facilities’ safety measures will be escorted off the premises.

Next reopening stage excludes casinos

Casinos are set to reopen Thursday, also at 25% capacity. New Jersey has been among the hardest hit states, which Murphy hinted at when rescinding the restaurant reopening. State Senate President.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he hopes to allow Atlantic City casinos to reopen by July 4, but the decision appears to be at least a couple of weeks away. Murphy referenced the aspirational date on the AC Mike Show with Mike Lopez on WOND radio Sunday morning.

• TheScore Opening Online Casino in New Jersey TheScore has announced a partnership with Twin River to open a new online casino in New Jersey! The online casino market is a tough one to break into, so why TheScore think they have the stuff to make it?
• As the Philadelphia region prepared for its own reopenings starting Friday, New Jersey hair salons, barbershops, outdoor swimming pools, and outdoor sports practices restarted on Monday, and the governor announced a pre-July Fourth opening date for casinos and indoor dining.
• New Jersey casinos. Atlantic City casinos continue to stay open, with restrictions. Of course, online casinos in New Jersey, are still running. New Mexico casinos. Worsening conditions in New Mexico have led to almost all casinos being closed. New York casinos. All New York casinos, both commercial and tribal, remain open for now.

Casinos in the east coast gambling hub have been dark since March 16 in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus. New Jersey is currently in Stage 1 of its reopening plan, called “The Road Back”. In a Monday press conference, Governor Murphy announced that because public health metrics have greatly improved and are trending in the right direction, the state can enter Stage 2 on June 15.

Outdoor dining and limited in-person retail can resume on June 15

Unfortunately for those who want to get back to gaming, he did not mention casinos. Outdoor dining and limited in-person retail can resume on June 15, provided there is no significant “backslide” in the COVID-19 data, while salons and barber shops can reopen on June 22. Gyms and health clubs, among other venues, will be able to reopen sometime after that.

Casinos would seem to fall into Stage 3, which includes “limited entertainment” and bars. All places that are permitted to reopen, regardless of the stage, must adhere to strict health and safety guidelines.

“Trying like heck” to get there

In his radio interview on Sunday, Governor Murphy said of a casino reopening date: “It’s probably still too early to give you a very specific answer, but there’s a lot of work going into that right now.”

He added that he and his team are “trying like heck to get toward” a target date of before or on the Fourth of July, where “subject to a lot of different parameters the casinos can be open again.”

It’s indoors, no ventilation. You’re sedentary, you’re in close proximity”

“The bad news is casinos sort of have the attributes that are hardest to deal with this virus. It’s indoors, no ventilation. You’re sedentary, you’re in close proximity,” he said.

Murphy did say, though, that because casinos are “big footprints”, he thinks the health challenges are solvable, implying that despite the inherent disadvantages, the large spaces can lend themselves to social distancing.

Casinos reopening in other states

Though New Jersey’s casino future is still up in the air, several states have begun reopening their gambling facilities. Most notably, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak announced last week that the Silver State’s casinos can begin accepting guests on Thursday, June 4.

Most major gaming companies have announced which of their Las Vegas properties will be in the first phase of reopening. Included among many others are the Flamingo, Caesars Palace, Bellagio, New York-New York, MGM Grand, Wynn, and the Venetian.

The Palm Beach Kennel Club in West Palm Beach has drawn kudos from the poker world

MGM has already reopened casinos in Mississippi, as has Eldorado in Louisiana. Several card rooms and casinos have also reopened in Florida, with Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood serving as a notable exception. The Palm Beach Kennel Club in West Palm Beach has drawn kudos from the poker world for the safety measures it has taken in its poker room, including substituting the dealer puck with a bottle of hand sanitizer.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Atlantic City tried Prohibition once before. It worked so well that Nucky Johnson, the legendary politician and racketeer, built a Boardwalk empire immortalized on HBO nearly a century later.

It also tried banning smoking, too. That lasted for 20 days as smokers stayed away, sending casino revenue plummeting.

But New Jersey will ban both, again, when Atlantic City’s nine casinos reopen after more than three months of coronavirus-related shutdowns.

The late-night announcements from Gov. Phil Murphy landed like a one-two punch on Atlantic City’s casino industry, already reeling from lost revenue during the pandemic, and making plans to creak back to life at the state-mandated 25% of normal capacity.

“No booze? No one’s coming,” said Bob McDevitt, president of a casino employees union. “I really don’t even think they should open. Why would they?”

Many casinos had planned to reopen Thursday, the first day the state will let them. But that was before they knew they could not let their customers smoke, drink alcohol or anything else, or eat inside the casinos.

The top-performing casino, the Borgata, almost immediately folded what it saw as a losing hand, announcing it was scrapping its reopening plans for the immediate future. Instead, it will wait until conditions are more favorable.

On Tuesday, casino executives huddled in staff meetings, looking for more information and trying to decide whether it made sense to reopen at all.

By mid-afternoon, all except the Borgata announced plans to reopen in the coming days. Resorts, Tropicana, Ocean, Golden Nugget and Hard Rock all said they will reopen Thursday. Harrah’s, Caesars and Bally’s will reopen Friday.

Borgata had no estimate of when it might reopen.

Jim Allen, president of Hard Rock International, said the company and its thousands of workers are eager to reopen and start making up for some of the losses they have experienced since March.

“People are really desperate for a job and a paycheck,” he said.

Murphy said Tuesday casinos will just have to endure a new reality until conditions improve.

“It’s not a life sentence,” he said. “We would like to be full-bore open; we’re just not there yet.”

Before the pandemic, Atlantic City had started to regain its groove, reclaiming its former spot at the nation’s No. 2 gambling market behind Nevada in terms of annual gambling revenue.

Nevada casinos reopened nearly a month earlier than those in New Jersey, with many of the same health protocols: temperatures checks for guests and workers, mandated masks after being optional for a time, and hand sanitizer stations. Smoking was still allowed.

Within minutes of Murphy’s announcements, made in a news release issued shortly before 10 p.m. Monday, social media lit up with complaints.

Some grumbled that the governor had sucked the fun out of the casino experience, even as a smaller number defended the decision on public health grounds. Some said they were scrapping long-planned trips, and others said they would take their business to Pennsylvania casinos.

Some vowed to come anyway, mixing drinks in their rooms and bringing sandwiches for dinner.

The bans will also reduce the number of laid-off workers who will return. Drink servers and indoor restaurant workers were to comprise a significant portion of the force that had been envisioned.

McDevitt said 60% of his union members had been scheduled to return to work this week. Now, as few as 30% may go back.

Casinos can offer outdoor dining, and those with beach bars, outdoor decks or Boardwalk seating still plan to offer it. And alcohol will still be sold in liquor stores and non-casino businesses. But the last thing casinos want is their patrons leaving the premises, for any reason.

Murphy said he reversed course on indoor dining because of the continuing outbreaks in parts of the country, even though New Jersey has seen a significant reduction in the number of its virus cases.

A significant portion of Atlantic City’s casino customers comes from New York, which leads the nation in total virus cases. Murphy also said crowds at popular spots at the Jersey Shore and elsewhere have not been following social distancing rules or wearing masks.

That angered many in the casino industry.

“This is like Catholic school: A handful of people misbehaves, and the entire class gets punished,” McDevitt said.

___

Ac Nj Casino Opening

Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC.

___

Nj Casino Reopening

Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.