Katrina-damaged Beau Rivage to reopen as soon as possible, employees to get 90-days pay.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Casino operator MGM Mirage said Wednesday it plans to “quickly” rebuild its Beau Rivage resort in Biloxi, Miss., severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
As the damage assessment begins, the company said it will commit to rebuild the resort, utilize employees in recovery and reconstruction wherever possible and aid impacted employees.
“We plan to rebuild and rebuild quickly,” Bobby Baldwin, president and chief executive of the company’s Mirage Resorts unit, said in a statement. “While we will take the time necessary to carefully assess the situation, we are also dedicated to identifying the fastest way to rebuild and restart the Gulf Coast economy and the lives of our employees and their community.”
MGM said it has invested some $800 million in Beau Rivage to date. With the announced rebuilding program, it will have invested more than $1 billion in the Gulf Coast region once the hotel reopens, the company said.
Workers have already cleared most of the mud and debris from Beau Rivage so assessment of the structural integrity and essential systems such as electricity and plumbing can begin.
“Massive numbers of man-hours and labor will be required to restore Beau Rivage and the Biloxi area in general,” Baldwin said.
The company said it has committed to paying the resort’s 3,400 employees for the next 90 days and is working to match workers with jobs at its other properties.
MGM also said it is committed to rehiring the employees after Beau Rivage reopens.
Source: AP
Biloxi, Miss. — The giant floating casinos of Biloxi were known to gamblers from Louisiana to Alabama as “The Boats,” but when Hurricane Katrina came calling, they were more like floating battering rams.
They were huge, rudderless, rampaging monstrosities.
Ripped from their moorings by 145 mph winds and catapulted by 30-foot waves, many of Mississippi’s 13 coastal casinos crashed around like elephants in toy stores, smashing historic homes and buildings in Biloxi and Gulfport.
One look at the aftermath in Biloxi, a resort town of 50,644 on the Gulf of Mexico, makes it quite clear that the big casinos credited with saving the Mississippi economy did their part to help wreck the town.
“That sombitch smacked my building, swept all my merchandise and guns out, and pushed that safe clear across the parking lot,” said John Godsey, standing in the rubble that used to be his pawnshop and looking up at the wrecked Casino Magic right next to it in the parking lot. “This building would probably still be standing if the casino hadn’t hit it.”
It is perhaps a bit of an irony that as search and rescue teams arrived in the area Monday to look for victims and homeowners took in the damage for the first time, gambling competed with the ever-rising death toll as a major concern in Mississippi.
State legislators and gambling company operators are pushing to rescind the law in Mississippi requiring gambling to be on the water. The idea of the law, passed in 1990, was to allow riverboat gambling but prevent casinos from overrunning the state.
Instead of quaint card games on old ferries, however, huge casinos were built on barges in Biloxi and Gulfport, which became destination spots for hundreds of thousands, helping revive Mississippi’s economy in the 1990s. Casinos accounted for $2.7 billion in gambling revenue and $334 million in tax revenue this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Southwest is offering refunds on a certain block of New Orleans flights. I just found out, because we were scheduled to fly into New Orleans on Thursday and drive to Biloxi. Usually they just offer a credti for a flight, but I was happy to see that full refunds will be offered.
More information can be found on Southwest’s Hurricane Katrina Page
http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/wx_advisory.html
