Prince George, BC. – There is an offer to purchase the Chances Gaming Centre.  The proposed purchaser is a development company from the lower mainland, "They are a fast growing development firm that is building  hotels,  shopping centres and subdivisions"says David McWalter of L&M Engineering.  "Their ultimate plan is to construct a new downtown hotel with 80 to 100 rooms.  They plan to hold and lease the property to accrue income in 4-5 years and develop a new hotel in five years."

The goal is to  rent out the facility right away, and one tenant is already lined up for 14 thousand  square feet.

Of course, that offer all depends on the Chances Gaming Centre being able to move to the Treasure Cove Casino.

A packed  Council chambers listened as Council gave third reading to the zoning text amendment changes and pending  a traffic impact  report, the move will take place. There were 55 letters of support for the move,  one letter against.

The current Chances Bingo hall has seating for 660 bingo players, and the move would trim that back to a maximum of 650 for special events, but the normal use number would be 402. 

The 100 slot allotment will not be carried over, so the overall number of slots in the City will be 575.

While there were plenty who spoke or provided letters in support of the move, Lyn Florey of the Community Planning Council was the only one to speak against the move.  In her letter,  she asked Council to remember the charities who support the move have a vested interest. They benefit financially from the bingo hall just as City Hall gets a benefit from gaming. Florey reminded Council that when the Bingo hall wanted to switch to a gaming centre, the argument for such a switch was that bingo was in decline “The CPC research pointed out at the time that there was no evidence whatsoever that this was the case and in fact we produced several case studies of other communities in exactly the same situation where the opposite had been the case.” She asks how closely are the revenues being watched? She also wants to know; if Mr. Major is still making a profit, although not as much as had been expected, why isn’t he just readjusting his expectations?

Questions about the move included;

Will the City have to pay back the extra money contributed by Mr. Major for the building of the parking lot?

Answer: "no"

Question: Is there still a covenant to build the six townhouses?

Answer: There is no plan to remove that covenant

After 23 years of being in the Bingo business, owner John Major says the business  has  put $150 million dollars into  local charities.   The move is happening so quickly because the other gaming operations are subsidising the bingo faciity by the tune of $40 thousand a month in payments to the bank.  Major says a new security rule meant that smokers couldn't continue playing bingo in the smoke patio.  "This upset a lot of our bingo players and has had a very dramatic impact on our business."  Major says portable bingo machines will be removed and that is upsetting more patrons.  "The result of these challenges to our business is that the building is too large for our operations, present and future."

The  construction of the Chances Gaming Centre had Major paying more than one million dollars for sewar, water and  phone lines, in addition, his company spent $350 thousand  dollars in landscaping. Major wanted to make it clear taxpayers did not carry the cost of servicing that building.

Major says the 25 thousand square foot building was designed for multiple uses and "Has enough structural support  to allow the construction of extra floors making it suitable for condos, hotels, or a variety of other uses".  Major says if the move is not approved, that would likely mean layoffs among the 100 employees and a reduction in the number of special events.

Before final reading which would allow the move, the Ministry of Transportation wants to see a  traffic impact study, in particular, how  the  added bingo operations will impact the intersection of highways 16 and 97.

David McWalter of L&M Engineering says the initial  traffic study was done in 2003 and  the addition of 402 bingo seats will not have any impact on the intersection.   He says the traffic volume is currently 50% of it's projected volume.

The construction value of the new show lounge and bingo hall would be $5 million dollars.

Council  was unanimous in approving the third reading.