“There was never a thought of pulling back,” says Joe Billhimer, executive vice-president of Baltimore-based Cordish Gaming Group, the in-the-works pleasure dome’s majority owner (and co-developer/owner, with Comcast-Spectacor, of Xfinity Live!, the fun-and-games emporium on the site where the Spectrum stood for decades).

“And so, as we start the first quarter of 2021, we’re very optimistic that each quarter we’ll just continue to track back to a post-pandemic type of atmosphere and feel in the casino.” – Eric Fitzgeraldĭespite the toll COVID has taken on bricks-and-mortar casinos in this region and elsewhere (on the other hand, the virus has, unsurprisingly, propelled online gambling revenues to unprecedented heights), and an earlier-in-the-year, coronavirus-imposed cessation of construction that lasted 43 days, scrapping the project was not an option. As the city’s first casino-hotel complex, it will offer guests 208 luxury rooms and suites in a 12-story tower. Its restaurant inventory will include Prime Rib, the steakhouse that had a 22-year-run inside the Warwick Hotel, the Southeast Asia-centric Luk Fu (pronounced “luck foo”), taqueria and burger outlets, both of which will be fronted by restaurateur-cum-TV-star Guy Fieri, and casual-dining concepts from three longtime Philly favorites, Chinatown’s Sang Kee Peking Duck House, Reading Terminal staple Termini Brothers Bakery and Lorenzo and Sons Pizza. Located on the south side of Packer Avenue between 10th and Darien streets, the adult playground will open with a full-service casino (including a 29-table, state-of-the-art poker room), a FanDuel-branded sports book and several bars.

Sometime before the end of March, Live! Casino Hotel Philadelphia will debut as the second gaming hall within the city limits. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to burn across America like a molecular version of a California wildfire, it’s not surprising that optimism appears headed for the endangered-species list.īut in South Philadelphia, hard by Citizens Bank Park, a $700 million monument to that most important of human attitudes is being constructed.

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