Provided by Casino Marousi – Καζίνο Μαρούσι
https://casinomarousi.com
https://casinomarousi.gr

Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
Sneak peak inside Danville Casino
Last year, state Del. Danny Marshall, R-Danville, bluntly stated what the impact of a temporary casino would be.
“Monday, May 15, 2023, is going to be one of those dates that will be remembered as a turning point in history in Danville,” he said moments before the doors opened to welcome a flood of people lined up to test their luck against the flashing lights of the new machines.
With that, a new era started. Although the makeshift facility is a mere giant tent — small in comparison to the final product still on track to open at the end of 2024 — it’s put Danville on the map as a destination.
With the calendar flipped to a new year, the Register & Bee presents its top 10 stories of 2023.
Since opening, the city has collected $7.5 million in tax revenue from Danville Casino. In addition, the agreement with Caesars Virginia resulted in direct payments totaling $3.1 million since it opened.
With a transformational impact already happening, Danville Casino’s opening landed at the No. 1 spot of the top newsmakers of 2023.
Danville Casino, Caesars Virginia’s temporary gaming facility, opened its doors May 15 in Schoolfield. The facility will be in operation until the $650 million permanent Caesars Virginia casino is complete in late 2024.
Caesars Virginia’s temporary facility, Danville Casino, opened to the public May 15 following a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony held by casino and city and state officials.
Hundreds of eager patrons lined up along the front of the building from both sides waiting for the doors to open shortly before 10 a.m.
A line of customers snaked along West Main Street and stretched alongside Bishop Road before ending at the front entrance of the building.
Customers poured into Schoolfield from all over the region to play slots and take their chances at craps, roulette, blackjack and other games.
The opening of the Danville Casino, which will be the temporary Caesars Virginia casino until the permanent facility is complete in late 2024, comes after being nearly five years in the making.
Curious visitors had dropped by the Schoolfield area for months to see the casino being built and city officials have received calls about the gaming establishment.
“Welcome, you all, to Danville,” Mayor Alonzo Jones shouted to customers during his remarks.
“Danville is real excited,” Jones told the crowd. “Our phones have been blowing off the hook [with] people from all over the Carolinas, all over the state of Virginia.”
When it open later this year, the full casino will have about 1,400 slot machines and table games.
Meeting and convention space will total 40,000 square feet with an entertainment venue to accommodate up to 2,500 guests. There also will be restaurants and bars.
Economic development officials are playing up the selling points of the 3,500-acre Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in the hopes of bringing a major manufacturer and thousands of jobs to the site.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s decision to halt plans for a $3.5 billion Ford Motor Co. battery plant over his concerns about Chinese influence cost the Dan River Region a reported 2,500 jobs with potential for more.
The details started to leak in January 2023.
If Ford finalized the project, the plant would have gone in the Southern Virginia Mega Site at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County. More than $200 million has been spent over 15 years to make Berry Hill a premier site and the largest publicly owned site in the Southeast. The plant would have built lithium iron phosphate batteries for Ford’s electric vehicles.
The location still has no tenant, however, after Youngkin intervened in late December 2022 to stop plans for the plant in Virginia because of its partnership with Chinese company Contemporary Amperex Technology. Youngkin first publicly discussed his decision after giving his State of the Commonwealth address.
Ford ultimately picked Michigan for the plant, but in November announced it was downsizing its original plans.
The automaker said that due to slowing electric vehicle sales growth, it will scale back the factory’s size, cutting the number of planned jobs by about one third to 1,700 from 2,500, according to The Associated Press. The annual battery cell output will drop from enough for 400,000 vehicles per year to about 230,000.
Ford put the plant, originally to cost $3.5 billion, on hold in late September as the autoworkers union went on strike at targeted assembly plants run by Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis. The contract dispute ended with workers at all three voting to ratify new agreements.
Crews fight a raging inferno Nov. 12 at Northpointe Apartments just outside of Danville.
The cause of a massive fire that leveled a building at Northpointe Apartments in the early morning hours Nov. 12 likely won’t be known, but foul play isn’t suspected.
The Pittsylvania County Fire Marshal’s Office — with assistance from the Danville Fire Marshal’s Office and state police — ruled the cause as undetermined.
It was shortly after 5 a.m. Nov. 12 when dispatchers in Pittsylvania County started getting calls of what turned into a raging inferno at 600 North Pointe Lane, an area just outside of the city limits.
Because of the “catastrophic damage to the apartments involved,” investigators weren’t able to come to a conclusion on how the fire began, a news release reported.
However, officials do not suspect “criminal acts” were involved.
After Blairs Fire & Rescue arrived on scene, a countywide call for help was initiated. In all, more than 100 firefighters from Pittsylvania County responded and some remained on scene for about 12 hours.
Members of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors listen to speakers concerned about a planned community in the Axton area during its Aug. 15 meeting.
A controversial proposal to construct a planned community in the Axton area was approved in August following passionate pleas from neighbors wanting to preserve their rural landscape.
The development first surfaced in late May when Southside Investing announced the ambitious project to build a mix of single-family homes, town houses and apartments on land within the Tunstall District of Pittsylvania County. They also want to have facilities for seniors, including a dependent and assisted-living campus.
The plan would address the need for more housing in the area and, as many supervisors alluded to, would be used as an extra incentive to lure a major industry to the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill.
The investment group said the location is “ideally situated” about 9 miles from the megasite.
Nearly all of the speakers conceded they were for development in moderation. Many donned identical white T-shirts with the word “mud” under a circle with a slash through it to signify they were against the mixed-use development plan.

While the proposal to add commercial components like a grocery store and hotel created some of the resistance, the main objection was a change to the country way of life so many are used to.
Danville civil rights leader Bishop Lawrence Campbell Sr., pastor at Bibleway Cathedral, left, answers questions on race relations in the city from Danville Police Chief Scott Booth during an event held at Averett University in 2019.
Local leaders mourned the death of Danville civil rights icon Bishop Lawrence Campbell Sr., recalling him as a dedicated fighter for equality who led efforts to bring racial progress to the city.
Campbell, who along with his wife, Gloria, co-founded Bibleway Cathedral, died March 27 at 93.
Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones told the Danville Register & Bee of the legacy he left behind and the path he help carve out for Black Danvillians.
Campbell’s “passion and compassion for all mankind inspired me and so many others,” Jones said.
“I’ve learned so much as I sit in the seat of the mayor and how he and his wife and so many others fought for civil rights for us to be able to sit where we are sitting,” Jones said. “As we look at where Danville is now and how Danville has grown and is continuing to grow, I give homage to people like Campbell and his wife, who have given so much for the city of Danville.”
Danville Police Chief Scott Booth shares a laugh with Tia Yancey, director of volunteerism with Averett University’s Center for Community Engagement and Career Competitiveness, after a farewell reception held for Booth at the police department’s headquarters Oct. 26.
Longtime Danville Police Department veteran Chris Wiles is Danville’s new police chief.
He was promoted from interim police chief to police chief, replacing Scott Booth, who resigned in October.
Wiles served as interim police chief for nearly two months and, prior to that, as deputy police chief since December 2022.
He has been with the police department for 30 years, having joined the department on Sept. 1, 1993.
Danville’s police chief from February 2018 to October, Booth began his new role leading Roanoke’s police department Oct. 31.
Policies put in place in Danville by Booth during his nearly six years with the department here included community engagement, across-the-board accountability and a stratified policing model to reduce crime.
The Danville Planning Commission hashes out ideas at a work session Oct. 4 to discuss how to address the surge in short-term rentals in the city. The commission voted to recommend capping the number of short-rentals in the city at 150.
In 2023, Danville grappled with the large increase in short-term rentals, including Airbnbs.
Meeting agendas for the planning commission and the Danville City Council have been flooded with special-use permit requests for those operations.
City officials want to streamline and speed up the process of approving special-use permits for short-term rentals.
That could include shifting that responsibility from the Danville Planning Commission and the Danville City Council over to the board of zoning appeals.
Danville Planning Director Renee Burton is examining the possibility of changing the process.
City Councilman James Buckner believes reducing the number of steps for approval will make the process easier for everyone.
“The decision to table it or to move it to a different department kind of takes it off the plate of us having to go through every single application two and three and four times,” Buckner said. “It makes things more simple for applicants, for one, and cuts a lot of things out and makes it a more streamlined process for folks trying to get permits.”
Work continues on the Dan River Falls project, which is expected to be complete on time in late 2024.
After sitting empty for years following the closure of Dan River Inc., the 100-year-old White Mill building is on its way to its second life as a commercial and residential development along the river.
Officials and hundreds of residents in the Dan River Region came out to a groundbreaking for the $85 million Dan River Falls project Jan. 12, 2023.
“Can’t you feel the excitement?” Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones said to the crowd. “I am very excited. Here today, we celebrate the transformation of the Dan River Mill No. 8.”
During his remarks at the event, Jones recalled when Dan River closed it doors and shuttered operations in 2006. He remembered the economic and emotional impact the closure had on the community.
The name “Dan River Falls” is a nod to Dan River Fabrics, the textile powerhouse of which the White Mill was a part. It also refers to Wynne’s Falls, the name of the first settlement along the river that became Danville, and the use of the Dan River, the banks on which the mill building sits, as an economic engine.
American National Bank and Trust Co.’s three-faced O.B. McClintock clock, with the bank in the background, was captured in this 2017 photo. American National Bankshares, which holds American National Bank and Trust Co., and Atlantic Union Bankshares Corp., announced in 2023 that the two companies will merge.  
American National Bank and Trust Co., which is being sold to Atlantic Union Bankshares Corp., was the last independently owned bank based in Danville.
American National Bankshares Inc., the holding company for American National Bank, and Atlantic Union announced the decision to merge July 25. The agreement involves an all-stock transaction.
Atlantic Union, based in Richmond and first started as a farm bank in Bowling Green in 1902, and American National, established in 1909, share more than 200 years of banking experience. The relationship goes back decades, Haley and Atlantic Union President and CEO John C. Asbury pointed out.
Fans listen to the music Sept. 7, the first day of the Blue Ridge Rock Festival hosted at Virginia International Raceway in Halifax County.
The Virginia Department of Health found violations surrounding sanitary conditions at the Blue Ridge Rock Festival in September, but did not play a role in shutting down the event came under extreme fire from fans.
The festival hosted in nearby Halifax County got off to a stormy start — literally — Sept. 7 when severe weather left thousands of fans scrambling for cover. Some had to wait hours for a shuttle to arrive.
At any given time, there were between two and a dozen members of the health department at the festival hosted at Virginia International Raceway located in Alton, Brookie Crawford, a spokesperson for the Southside Health District, told the Register & Bee.
The sold-out event was expected to bring 45,000 people to VIR, but about 50,000 to 60,000 showed up, Halifax County Sheriff Fred S. Clark told The Gazette-Virginian newspaper in South Boston.
Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
Sneak peak inside Danville Casino

Danville Casino, Caesars Virginia’s temporary gaming facility, opened its doors May 15 in Schoolfield. The facility will be in operation until the $650 million permanent Caesars Virginia casino is complete in late 2024.
Economic development officials are playing up the selling points of the 3,500-acre Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in the hopes of bringing a major manufacturer and thousands of jobs to the site.
Crews fight a raging inferno Nov. 12 at Northpointe Apartments just outside of Danville.
Members of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors listen to speakers concerned about a planned community in the Axton area during its Aug. 15 meeting.
Danville civil rights leader Bishop Lawrence Campbell Sr., pastor at Bibleway Cathedral, left, answers questions on race relations in the city from Danville Police Chief Scott Booth during an event held at Averett University in 2019.
Danville Police Chief Scott Booth shares a laugh with Tia Yancey, director of volunteerism with Averett University’s Center for Community Engagement and Career Competitiveness, after a farewell reception held for Booth at the police department’s headquarters Oct. 26.
The Danville Planning Commission hashes out ideas at a work session Oct. 4 to discuss how to address the surge in short-term rentals in the city. The commission voted to recommend capping the number of short-rentals in the city at 150.
Work continues on the Dan River Falls project, which is expected to be complete on time in late 2024.
American National Bank and Trust Co.’s three-faced O.B. McClintock clock, with the bank in the background, was captured in this 2017 photo. American National Bankshares, which holds American National Bank and Trust Co., and Atlantic Union Bankshares Corp., announced in 2023 that the two companies will merge.  
Fans listen to the music Sept. 7, the first day of the Blue Ridge Rock Festival hosted at Virginia International Raceway in Halifax County.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.

source
Visit
Provided by Casino Marousi – Καζίνο Μαρούσι
https://casinomarousi.com
https://casinomarousi.gr

Contact : casinomarousi@gmail.com

Please follow and like us: