The tribe can annex the land thanks to a new federal law that allows the tribe to make any land within a neighborhood with heavy tribal ties a part of its reservation. So I think generally speaking, making sure that we’re going nice and slow, that we’re doing this in a thoughtful way, is very important.”Įntertainment venues around the region and the country have started to allow guests back inside, including the Horseshoe Casino in Baltimore, which will open to the public on Sunday.The long-closed Century Park 16 movie theater near Grant Road and Interstate 10 is being torn down to make way for a new casino owned by the Pascua Yaqui tribe.

“We want to get our guests and our employees comfortable with it. “We want to get the community comfortable with these new health and safety protocols,” Mr. The resort will have a soft opening for a small number of rewards program members this weekend before opening to the public, Mr. Dealers will regularly sanitize equipment, including poker chips.Ĭards will be dealt face-up for some games so that guests never touch them in others, like baccarat, cards will be “single-use” and thrown away after every game. John Flynn, MGM’s vice president of administration, said only 50% of the card tables and gaming machines will open Monday and not all of the resort’s employees will need to be back at work.Įmployees have set up more Plexiglass at the tables to keep guests separated from each other and from the dealers. National Harbor guests will undergo a temperature check via thermal imaging whenever they enter the casino. Those protocols include requiring face masks, maintaining 6-feet of social distance at all times and adding hand sanitizer stations.

National Harbor isn’t the first MGM property in the country to reopen: A resort in Mississippi, about half of its Las Vegas properties and a resort near Cleveland reopened earlier this month with increased safety protocols. But I think the guests are really going to enjoy it, because it just speeds up the whole process.” It’s gonna take a little bit to get used to,” said Anthony Caratozzolo, National Harbor’s vice president of hospitality.

“It’s going to be something totally different. MGM executives said these digital benefits were in the works before this year, but once the pandemic came to the U.S., they decided it was the right time to accelerate their projects.

Casino with movie theater