METROPOLIS, Ill. — With Region 5 moving to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Tier 2 mitigation status in the COVID-19 fight, Harrah’s Metropolis Hotel & Casino has reopened.
The hotel was slated to open Thursday while the gaming floor opened last weekend.
“Our first customers came back on Saturday. We’re very excited to be open again,” said Chad Lewis, the casino’s advertising & public relations representative. “We’re easing back into it. The big thing is getting our employees back to work and getting the economy stimulated again.”
The casino floor is now open at its normal business hours — 8 a.m. until 6 a.m. daily.
The in-house dining service and bar opened for dine-in Wednesday. Carry-out service is still available as a dining option.
“We are taking very high precautions cleaning everything to make sure everybody’s safe,” Lewis said.
That means masks are required at all times for employees and patrons to enter and once inside the facility. Sanitizing stations are located throughout the premises.
“We have a clean team that’s on a schedule going around wiping down everything, making sure machines are clean, making sure anything that is touched by anybody is constantly cleaned,” Lewis said.
Over the course of the pandemic, Harrah’s has been fully closed twice — the first lasting almost four months from mid-March 2020 to early-July 2020; and the second lasting two months from just before Thanksgiving 2020 and its reopening on Saturday. In the five months during the pandemic that Harrah’s has been open, the availability of its food and beverage services was under mitigation.
“Once we get out of the next of mitigation, we can open up everything again and be fully operational. That’s what we’re waiting on, to get that tax money generated again,” Lewis said. “We’re ready to hit the ground running once we get back open fully.”
