Victoria’s Crystal Garden is no longer on the table as a potential casino site, say Victoria officials.
The B.C. Lottery Corp. has told the city that remodelling the Crystal for a casino would be too challenging, deputy city manager Jocelyn Jenkyns said.
“I think they were looking at this and saying, ‘How do I retrofit this?’
“How do I run miles and miles of wiring and cabling and still have it be beautiful,” Jenkyns said.
“The other thing that was a bit of an issue was parking, not withstanding that we have the underground parking at the conference centre.”
Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the lottery corporation said no decisions about locations have been made.
“The location, size and scope of the proposed facility will be determined after a service provider has been chosen,” Angela Law of lottery corporation media relations said in an email.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps said that taking Crystal Garden out of the running would be welcome as council has received several emails from residents in the Humboldt Valley opposed to the idea of a casino there.
“There haven’t been any formal communications between council and BCLC by way of motion, but certainly our staff have been meeting with them. I’ve made clear to our staff to at least feed into the process that the Humboldt Valley residents were not keen on the idea,” Helps said.
“Whether or not that has informed BCLC, I’m not sure, but I think it’s good to hear that, and we’ll look forward to see some sites that are on the table.”
The lottery corporation announced in July that Victoria had won the contest to host the capital region’s second casino, with the one in View Royal remaining the primary gaming site.
Timelines for the new Victoria casino are still coming together, lottery corporation president and CEO Jim Lightbody said this week.
One of the first steps is for the corporation to find a partner to run it.
Victoria had been short-listed with Saanich as potential host municipalities for a second casino, joining the one in View Royal. Saanich had put forward sites near Uptown or in the Burnside-Tillicum area.
Victoria identified the Crystal and the adjacent Apex lot as possible casino sites. No site in Victoria is zoned for a casino, so any location would require rezoning. City policy mandates that a casino cannot be a standalone facility and has to instead be part of another use, such as a hotel.
The news that the Crystal is no longer in the running comes after the lottery corporation announced this week that the View Royal casino will double in size with a major upgrade that includes a 600-seat entertainment venue and 350 more slot machines and electronic games. There will also be 12 new table games with live dealers to add to the current 15, and new dining venues such as a buffet, casual lounge and bar.
Construction that will add 42,000 square feet to the complex is expected to begin in 2017 and be completed in the first half of 2018. The cost has not been disclosed.
