About 600 people are getting ready to go back to work at the Nugget Casino Resort. That is about half the number that worked there before the state required nonessential businesses to close. Governor Steve Sisolak announced the beginning of Phase Two of Nevada's Roadmap to Recovery, Tuesday, which included the a target date of June 4 for gaming to resume.

"Very exciting," Beatriz Ballesteros, Marketing & Events Manager for the Nugget said. "This building is not the same without all of our coworkers."

"I'm glad to be back," Martin Perez-Becerra, Chef at Rosie's Cafe in the Nugget said. "Hopefully, we can get this going and just like a fresh start. I'm looking forward to have a lot of people enjoy the time while they stay here."

The Nugget is testing its employees for COVID-19 before they can return to their jobs. Management and employees say that offers some peace of mind.

"It will help us be more confident with our company and with ourselves," Perez-Becerra said. "We can feel a little bit of trust and still protect ourselves."

Casinos will reopen with strict new guidelines. The Gaming Control Board is allowing up to 50 percent capacity. It requires staff to wear masks while in the building and guests are encouraged to do the same. Everyone will get their temperature checked at the door. If they have a temperature of 100.4 degrees or more, twice in 15 minutes casinos have the option of sending them to a physician or putting them in a room for medical evaluations in a separate room. Guests will notice many differences.

"Thermal cameras at the door or how we're doing slot machines or door handles or fogging rooms or not going into a guest room during their stay so they're not having multiple people in their rooms, no more than five people to an elevator," Anthony A. Marnell III, Owner of the Nugget Casino Resort said.

The casino floor will be much different. Social distancing guidelines will be in place at bars, in the pit and at slot machines. Four of the Nugget's restaurants will reopen.

"Every other slot chair has been removed," Marnell said. "Three chairs at every table game. The restaurants have been really spread out. Thank goodness, we have some pretty big rooms so we're able to still accommodate a good amount of people."

The casino will not offer valet service and bell desk service will be limited. Meeting and convention space will have less capacity, day and night clubs will not reopen. The swimming pool will be open.

"We're doing everything we possibly know how to do to ensure guests are safe," Marnell said.

Smaller properties like the Bonanza Casino are making some big changes, too. Both properties are training employees and getting them up to speed on how to clean and disinfect areas and equipment.

"This property has never been cleaner," Ryan Sheltra, General Manager of Bonanza Casino said. "We repainted the outside, we've been remodeling, we've broken up the slot banks."

Bonanza will have a different look when it reopens. It removed the pit and replaced the table games with slot machines. The casino has offered live gaming since the 1970s but Sheltra says the standards are too much to keep the tables.

"To have customers right on top of our dealers, we couldn't create the spacing where we had a comfort level to the CDC guidelines," Sheltra said.

One of its restaurants will open with the rest of the casino but the steakhouse will not open until July, at the earliest. Sheltra says the buffet will probably not reopen until there is a vaccine in place. Otherwise, he is excited for the casino to reopen.

"I can't even tell you how excited we are to see our customers again and even more importantly, get my employees back working," Sheltra said. "It will have been 78 days being shut down and to get our people back in the building, get paychecks going, put people back to work, it's a great feeling."

Bonanza did have to lay off some people, including its dealers. Sheltra says dealers are in high demand and expects another property to hire them as more of them reopen, and eventually expand.

 

 

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