A groundbreaking day for the City of North Bay

After many years of waiting, the City of North Bay finally broke ground on its new casino.

Cascades Casino North Bay, which is owned by Gateway Casinos and Entertainment, began construction on Friday on Pinewood Park Drive in the southern end of the city.

The city has been working toward this development for the last few years, being the first municipality in northern Ontario to pass a council resolution to have a casino when Ontario Lottery and Gaming announced the northern bundle, said Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli.

Northern Ontario has five gaming zones North Bay, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay and Kenora which have been bundled together by OLG. Gateway Casinos is the sole operator of casinos in the northern part province.

Gateway is making a $31-million investment to build the new casino in North Bay, which will also provide up to 300 long-term, sustainable jobs for the community, saysGateway Casinos chief marketing and communications
officer, Carrie Kormos.

The city says the new casino will help with economic development in the area, bringing jobs and tourism to the community.

"This is going to help boost our tourism, it's going to help create jobs...there's going to be the jobs that when it comes to building, the construction jobs, it's going to have the spin offs of they're going to be buying local so it's going to help our local business owners," said the city's deputy mayor Tanya Vrebosch.

Cascade Casino is expected to open in mid-July 2020.