Slot machines are being removed to create social distancing. Temperature stations are being installed to make sure employees and guests are healthy when they walk in the door.

• Newest Indian Casino In Northern California Map

Indian Casinos Along I-5 in California. Rain Rock Casino – Exit I-5 at the Moonlit Oaks Avenue exit in Yreka in Northern California to try your luck at slots and table games at Rain Rock. Here are some of the highlights at Northern California casinos in the coming months: Cache Creek: This casino in Brooks (Yolo County) features a diverse lineup in its Club 88, ranging from the. For now, the Graton operation will be king. It will have 3,000 slots and 144 gaming tables, far more than any other Northern California casino. On June 8, Cache Creek – one of the last casinos in Northern California to reopen – promised a “new normal” to fit life with the virus: fewer people, fewer games and physical distancing on. The upcoming opening of Harrah’s Northern California is the fruit of a partnership between the Buena Vista Rancheria Me-Wuk Tribe and Las Vegas casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. The property is scheduled to open doors at 4:29 pm local time on April 29.

Two months after closing because of the coronavirus pandemic, Northern California’s casinos are gearing up to reopen.

None of the six casinos that ring the Sacramento area have announced reopening dates. But as retailers and other segments of the broader economy begin to awaken from the COVID-19 shutdown, the Indian tribes that operate the region’s casinos are reconfiguring their venues to accommodate public health guidelines.

Exactly when the slot machines will start chiming again remains uncertain.

“We’ve been kind of looking at the end of the month, first of June,” said JC Rieger, general manager and senior vice president at Harrah’s Northern California in Amador County.

Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Sacramento, which opened last fall in Wheatland, is “optimistic that we will reopen in May,” said casino president Mark Birtha. He said Hard Rock officials have been meeting with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s staff and expect to announce a reopening date soon.

Cache Creek Casino Resort plans to open “as early as June, if all goes well,” general manager Kari Stout-Smith said in a video posted on the casino’s website. She said Cache Creek’s golf course has already reopened.

A group of San Diego County casinos already has informed Newsom that they expect to begin reopening as early as Monday.

Because tribes are considered sovereign nations, legal experts and the tribes themselves say they have the authority to reopen their casinos regardless of what the governor says.

Tribal casinos in California have become an $8 billion a year business, and the Sacramento casinos operate as many slot machines as Reno’s. The abrupt shutdown of the industry in mid-March has depleted the tribes of their main revenue sources.

The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, for instance, has committed to paying Cache Creek’s 2,300 employees through the end of May but “we may have difficult decisions ahead,” Stout-Smith said in her video update.

The other Sacramento area casinos, Thunder Valley, Jackson Rancheria and Red Hawk, didn’t offer any information on when they might reopen. Casinos in Reno and at Lake Tahoe, which are subject to Nevada state regulation, haven’t announced any reopening dates. However, state officials have announced guidelines casinos must follow in Nevada before they can begin greeting customers again.

Get ready for plastic shields, fewer slot machines

The few casinos that have reopened across the United States have presented their customers with a completely new look - and, in some cases, an unexpected gift.

When the Thunderbird Casino in Norman, Okla., reopened Tuesday, employees handed out masks to the customers, most of whom didn’t bring their own. The slot machines were spaced six feet apart.

Northern California gamblers can expect comparable changes.

Rieger said Harrah’s might close some or all of its smoking sections to keep the air cleaner. Fewer slot machines will be available, “which is kind of the industry standard,” he said. The casino is still scrambling to figure out how to keep chips sanitized, he said.

Red Hawk Casino in Shingle Springs said employees will wear masks. Guests will have to wear them, too, and masks “will be available to purchase for guests who need one,” the casino said on its website. Plastic barriers “may be installed in areas of the casino, where appropriate, for the safety of our guests and team members.” Red Hawk hasn’t announced an opening date.

Tehama County’s Rolling Hills Casino will require customers and employees to wear masks, too. Plastic shields will be placed at registers. The casino floor is being reconfigured for social distancing.

Rolling Hills, which hasn’t set a reopening date, said walk-through “temperature kiosks” will be installed at the entry points, and no one will be allowed in with a temperature reading higher than 100.4 degrees. The casino said the kiosks will provide instant readings so people can enter quickly.

A “Clean Team” employee will clean a slot machine the minute a customer walks away. The air filtration system is being enhanced to “replenish the air inside” every four and a half minutes.

Cache Creek is installing “touchless thermal scans,” removing some of its slots and table games, and plans to require masks of guests and customers alike. Building occupancy “will be strictly limited” to improve social distancing, Smith said in her video update.

“When you come to the casino,” she said, “it will be a new experience for all of us.”

———

©2020 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.)

Visit The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.) at www.sacbee.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The announcement came with great fanfare – and caution: Cache Creek Casino Resort in the Yolo County town of Brooks was open for business.

Months earlier, in March, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and tribes across California closed their gaming floors as part of an unprecedented statewide shutdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus. It was the first time the casino resort closed in more than 30 years. Cache Creek was the first casino in Northern California to close, casino officials noted, ahead of California and Yolo County’s health mandates.

On June 8, Cache Creek – one of the last casinos in Northern California to reopen – promised a “new normal” to fit life with the virus: fewer people, fewer games and physical distancing on the floor; thermal scans and sanitization protocols. Casino standbys like poker, valet service and buffets were off the menu, at least temporarily.

“While we cannot stress enough how much we have missed our guests and employees, this will be a new normal for all of us,” Cache Creek general manager Kari Stout-Smith said in a release ahead of the reopening.

The same day in Placer County, Thunder Valley Casino Resort in Lincoln reopened, stressing similar precautionary protocols and assuring returning guests that United Auburn Indian Community officials had carefully considered Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request to pause casino openings.

Today California is the new epicenter of the nation’s rampaging coronavirus crisis. Cases have exploded to nearly 525,000, the state’s COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 9,700, and Yolo and Placer are among those on the state’s watchlist of counties where COVID-19 cases have gotten worse.

But the casinos remain open and are greeting guests.

Gaming tribes voluntarily closed the casino doors in March in response to the pandemic but the governor cannot bar tribes from reopening because of the sovereign nation status of tribal lands. Ben Deci, a Yocha Dehe spokesman, told The Sacramento Bee in May that Cache Creek’s June restart was coordinated in concert with Newsom’s office.

Red Hawk Casino and Jackson Rancheria joined Cache Creek with their own June 8 reopenings featuring reconfigured gaming floors and strict safety protocols. Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Wheatland in Yuba County opened even earlier, on May 21.

Spokesmen for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and United Auburn Indian Community declined comment or did not answer The Bee’s interview requests, but James Siva, chairman of the California Indian Gaming Association, said in a July statement that the state’s tribal governments were “closely monitoring case surges in their respective communities” and were “working closely with the state and federal governments to ensure the safety of our tribal communities, including our economic operations.”

Closures caused a financial beating

The losses caused by the statewide spring shutdown were a likely a key factor in tribes’ push to reopen. Gaming revenues – $8 billion annually and the sole source of income for many California tribes – took a beating during California’s mandatory lockdown, casino industry executives told The Bee in May.

Yolo County spokeswoman Jenny Tan also said the Yocha Dehe and Yolo County are “communicating with each other,” as well as with Yolo cities and school districts in monitoring the virus.

But the Yolo and Placer casinos have drawn attention for the positive cases at the sites in early July and the criticism leveled at Thunder Valley in July by former employees who said they weren’t properly protected from the virus while on the job after the casino reopened.

Cache Creek committed to mandatory ongoing COVID-19 testing of its approximately 2,300 employees July 3 after an undisclosed number of workers tested positive.

In a statement at the time announcing the testing regime, Cache Creek officials said they would continue to work with Yolo County Health and Human Services and contact trace.

“Like other employers, we recognize the challenges of keeping a staff of approximately 2,300 people healthy during a pandemic. We expected increased testing could reveal COVID-19 cases that might otherwise go undetected; that’s precisely why we do it.”

But that hasn’t satisfied the California Gaming Association, the trade group representing card rooms across the state, which sent a letter to Newsom in July that called on him to temporarily close all gaming operations in counties under shutdown orders.

California’s card rooms – a $5 billion industry, says the gaming association – remain closed by the governor’s order, while sovereign nations’ gaming operations remain open.

“We believe you have the authority to order ALL casino operations, including tribal casinos, to cease operations in the affected counties,” the July letter read, citing tribal compact language that tribes not conduct gaming in a manner that endangers public health.

Newsom press secretary Jesse Melgar in a statement Tuesday said the governor’s office is talking with the sovereign gaming tribes to determine what steps will be needed to limit the spread of COVID-19 on tribal lands.

“The administration is currently engaged in government-to-government consultation with tribal enterprises located within listed areas of concern to determine the appropriate measures to take moving forward to limit the transmission of COVID-19 on tribal lands,” Melgar said in an email.

The statement came the same day Newsom signed gaming compacts between the state and six Northern California tribes including the Ione Band of Miwok Indians and the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, which operates Red Hawk Casino in Placerville.

Doctor suggests casinos can give the virus ‘superpowers’

Governor’s officials in announcing the new pacts Tuesday noted the agreements’ commitment to promoting tribal economic development, self-sufficiency, revenue sharing with non-gaming tribes and quality of life while “affording meaningful patron and employee protections; and mitigating the off-reservation impacts of the gaming facility.”

But Dr. Peter Chin-Hong is deeply concerned. An infectious disease specialist at University of California, San Francisco, he says the gaming floor is an ideal environment to spread the virus, calling casinos an “extremely high risk.”

And, because casinos are a regional as well as local attraction, groups can carry the virus to homes and communities far from the gaming floor.

“It’s totally high risk. They are attractions. They draw people from a wide area. It’s not like going to a local restaurant,” Chin-Hong said. “This is a social, emotional environment.”

Chin-Hong said other factors are at play: how long players are inside the casino; air quality; whether smoking is allowed; and surfaces that he said can “become a Caltrain or BART” to transmit the disease.

Droplets from someone infected to someone who isn’t typically travel 3 feet. That’s why social distancing is important to curbing the virus.

In a highly charged casino setting, he explained, the odds are riskier and those same virus carrying droplets can travel many feet farther, attaining what Chin-Hong calls “superpowers.”

“You can make them fly when you shout or yelp for joy,” he said. “The last I checked, all these things happen in a casino setting.”

———

©2020 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.)

Visit The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.) at www.sacbee.com

Newest Indian Casino In Northern California Map

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.