Finance Minister Victor Boudreau can't get into any of the specifics
of the plans for a casino in Moncton until an agreement with proponent
Sonco Gaming New Brunswick Ltd. is signed.
This photo shows the Magnetic Hill area, where a casino will likely be
built. Highway 2, the Trans-Canada Highway, runs from left to right at
the top of the photo, with Mountain Road bisecting it and Magic
Mountain water park in the lower right corner. The casino's likely
location is located in the upper right-hand corner.
But he did let one thing slip.
"It will really be a destination casino complex, much bigger and more elaborate than what is in Halifax, for example," he says.
Boudreau
says cabinet was able to get a glimpse of the casino design yesterday
morning and says Monctonians will definitely like it.
"From what I've seen, I certainly think it is something that is going to fit in well," he says. "It is a very nice design."
Boudreau
says they now have two months to sign the service provider agreement
with Sonco, but hopes it will happen sooner rather than later.
"We
want them to start and they want to get started," he says, adding that
once the agreement is signed, all of the details of the project will be
released.
"There are other components of this proposal in terms
of New Brunswick content and some other pretty interesting things for
the province and the Moncton area that we'll be able to release," he
says, giving Monctonians a tease of potentially better things to come.
Although
Boudreau would not reveal the exact site in Magnetic Hill, insiders say
the likely location is a 70-acre piece of land on Charles Lutes Road at
Mountain Road.
No building permits have yet been issued for the development.
Greg
Neate, general manager of the Magnetic Hill Golf Club, says the
addition of a casino in his end of the city can only mean good things
for the club.
"The more traffic and the more hospitality we can
offer in the north end, the better for the golf course," he says,
already envisioning a partnership with the casino that could see green
fees traded for loyalty points awarded to frequent customers or other
such arrangements.
Neate says the casino will just be one more
draw to an area of the city that already has plenty of family-oriented
activities and accommodations, making it a perfect vacation destination.
Mark Jelley, general manager of Magic Mountain, doesn't expect the casino will have a positive impact on his business.
"Our
customers are families at Magic Mountain, we provide a place for
families to come together and have fun and we believe that casinos
bring a different target market, they're not bringing in families, it's
not the same market, not the same focus," he says. "We don't see it as
a complementary business."
On the other hand, Jelley doesn't
expect the development to have a negative impact, though he says that
may depend on the actual location of the casino and its effect on
traffic patterns.
The casino complex will include a convention
centre facility that will be able to seat 1,500 people in a theatre
setting or 1,400 banquet-style.
Moncton has been trying to get a
convention centre built in its downtown for years now. Boudreau says it
will be up to the city to decide if it still needs the downtown
convention centre space. Another major project that has been discussed
for the downtown is a replacement for the aging Moncton Coliseum.
"Maybe
that is something that can be looked at as a substitute or maybe at the
end of the day the city will feel a downtown convention centre is still
justifiable," Boudreau says. "The province will continue to work with
the city as we've always done in helping them move forward with their
priorities."
Boudreau says the province had no preference for downtown Moncton versus the outskirts of Moncton or vice versa.
The request for proposals did not specify any area of the province in order to allow the market to determine the best location.
"Having
received four proposals all in the Moncton-Dieppe area, it was a pretty
clear indication that southeastern New Brunswick was the place to be,"
Boudreau says. "We didn't look at uptown versus downtown, we had a
series of criteria that were applied to all four proposals."
In other words, location wasn't the main deciding factor, the quality of the proposal was.