Temp casino grand opening on Nov. 27

Mark Brown, the chief executive officer of Best Sunshine International, Ltd., said Friday piling is ongoing at the construction site of their $500-million casino resort in Garapan, and that the completion date is still on target for December 2016. Meantime, Best Sunshine has scheduled Nov. 27 as the grand opening date of their temporary casino in T Galleria.

“The piling is going in. We are still on target,” he said.

Brown said Ji Xiabao, project director of the casino resort project and son of the principal stakeholder of Imperial Pacific, which owns Best Sunshine, is “always tweaking the look” of the Garapan facility and that it would turn out spectacular.

“It’s unbelievable. So we are set right now, it’s done,” Brown said, noting that U.S. architect Paul Steelman has settled on his “masterpiece.”

“He’s tweaking the door, he’s tweaking this…Mr. Ji is such a perfectionist and Paul Steelman is more of a perfectionist. He travels the world and he builds buildings all over the world, so he is trying to build something that…also fits into the island at the same time”—something related to the island culture.

“…We want to wow everybody,” Brown said. “It’s something you have never seen before on this island. That’s what we are building.”

Grand opening

When asked, Brown confirmed Nov. 27 as the official grand opening of their temporary casino at T Galleria.

Brown said he had been weighing the pros and cons about having it on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, but has heard that people want to go out after shopping during Black Friday sales.

Unlike their “soft” opening, he wants the “official government grand opening” where they will have acting governor Ralph DLG Torres, the Commonwealth Casino Commission, and the CNMI Legislature.

“We are going to invite the entire government,” Brown said. “All the government and everybody that has helped us get to this point. All the local business people that have helped us get to this point. It’s really just a thank you very much.”

Brown hopes to have all their contract workers arrive soon as this would allow them to open up all their gaming tables.

“I think we’ll have a total of about 250 [workers],” he said, noting they’d be dealers, supervisors, and surveillance, among others. “Our plan is to have every game open,” he said.