Guests on the invite list for Revel Entertainment‘s resort preview period in Atlantic City won’t see it in full operation when they arrive on April 2, but they will see improvements in the surrounding area, according to the company’s CEO, Kevin DeSanctis.
“We should be in pretty good shape by Memorial Day Weekend, and hit strides by the Fourth of July,” DeSanctis said in a media conference call Thursday. “But it will take a year before we really know how this facility operates. Things are going to go wrong. We expect some issues. If you bring things online in stages, you know what the problems are.”
While exterior construction on the $2.4 billion, 47-story, 6.3 million-square-foot hotel and casino is nearing completion, only half the resort’s restaurants and a third of its rooms will be in service during the eight-week preview, which is reserved for people who worked on the site or reside in the surrounding community, DeSanctis said.
According to DeSanctis, Revel is projected to receive $260 million under Atlantic City’s tourism district master plan, which was approved by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority on Feb.1. Once the resort is completely up and running on May 25, that money will be reinvested into the local community, DeSanctis said.
As a result of the funding, DeSanctis said the mega-resort is marketing the motto, “every time you come to Revel, you’ll see something in the area that hasn’t been there before.”
