Philadelphia Casino Construction
2021年12月18日Register here: http://gg.gg/xaaxa
In the midst of a pandemic that has shut down the region and hospitalized thousands, dozens of construction workers reported for duty Monday morning at the site of the new Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia.
*The long-delayed Philadelphia casino in the city’s Stadium District hopes to open in 2020. The company behind the project says it will cost $700 million. The World’s Online Gaming Authority Since 1995.
*The Philadelphia Live! Project is one of the largest construction projects currently underway in the state, with the company touting 3,000 direct and indirect construction jobs it is providing. It is also the biggest single addition to the state’s casino template since 2010.
*Casino & Hotel Philadelphia, the incoming entertainment destination is launching an on-site recruitment center in the next few weeks to begin hiring for nearly 2,000 jobs.
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/Patriot-News. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter.
As the coronavirus spread across the region last month and Gov. Tom Wolf ordered a halt to all but life-sustaining business, construction workers on the site of the new Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia fretted that the general contractor wasn’t doing enough to protect them from being infected.
Gilbane Building Company, having obtained a waiver from the state, continued work on the $700 million casino, one of the most expensive projects in the city. Hundreds of workers traveled to the site on Packer Avenue near Citizens Bank Park — some from as far away as New York and Maryland.
Then a worker who had been on the job for two days in mid-March tested positive for COVID-19.
“Yesterday afternoon we were notified that a taper that worked on the Live! Hotel & Casino project tested positive for the COVID-19 virus,” Gilbane project executive Dan Kelley wrote in a March 26 email, listing people who might have had contact with the infected man.
Some workers responded by walking off the site, convinced that Gilbane was not taking the coronavirus seriously.
On Monday, sheet metal workers left after their union head said they were “in danger” because the company was ignoring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention precautions.
“We were like, ‘We’re not working here,’” said a construction worker who asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation. “Most of our guys felt this was bull crap. Some of these guys don’t care, but this spreads like wildfire.”
Then on Tuesday morning, workers were told in another email from Kelley that a first-shift medic who oriented new hires and did drug screening had tested positive for the virus. The medic had worked on site between March 11 and March 25, according to the email. Kelley advised those who’ve had contact with him to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Gilbane, an international development company, said it had been allowed to push ahead with construction by obtaining a waiver from the Wolf administration to continue operating. But the administration has given few details about how the waiver process works and has refused repeated requests to provide a list of which businesses applied to reopen, what they said their life-sustaining business is, and why they were approved or denied.
As of Monday, Gilbane said it was planning to keep building. But state officials now say the waiver is being misused.
“An exemption was granted to Gilbane Construction, but that exemption does not allow for casino construction,” Casey Smith, a spokesperson for the state Department of Community and Economic Development, said Monday, replying to questions from the Inquirer and Spotlight PA.
The waiver was granted to Gilbane only for those “projects that pose [a] public safety hazard’ and need more work to safely close down, “health care construction,” and, in one case, completing a much-needed Philadelphia school, Smith said.
“Per guidance, when a company receives an exemption in response to a request in which it specifically identified a particular element of the business as essential to health care or another life-sustaining operation, that exemption only relates to those specified life-sustaining activities,” Smith said.
Gilbane declined this week to answer questions about how many workers at the casino site tested positive or negative for COVID-19 or how it obtained the exemption to the state shutdown.
Nor did Cordish Cos., the Baltimore-based casino operator and developer that took control of the project developer, Stadium Casino LLC, in November 2018.
“In the case of the casino project, the building is still exposed to the elements and requires critical enclosure and infrastructure work to be completed before construction work can be safely paused,” Cordish said in a statement Monday. “The safety of all workers on the casino job and all construction jobs in the region is paramount.”
Gary Masino, president of Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 19, sent a letter to his members Monday informing them that they were being pulled from the casino site, as well as two other Philadelphia job sites — The Philadelphia Art Museum and the city’s police administration building — because union leadership felt general contractors there were “not complying with the CDC regulations and preventative precautions” regarding the coronavirus.
“We felt that the workers on those projects were in danger,” Masino wrote.
Philadelphia casino news. But Cordish said the company has adopted protocols consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, including social-distancing requirements, handwashing stations, and staggered shifts to limit the number of workers on site together.
Those rules haven’t always been followed, workers say.
In an April 1 email to his employees, a subcontractor said he had been informed that day that a casino site worker had previously tested positive for COVID-19, but that workers were to return to the site on Monday after it was deemed safe.
“PPE (personal protective equipment) is extremely scarce as most understand at this point and we will continue to refine and change our program based on this,” wrote Michael Jackson, vice president of Philadelphia D&M, which specializes in framing, drywall, and carpentry. “We look forward to finishing this project with the vigor we started with, all the while keeping YOU, our employees and multiemployer trade partners as safe as we can in our current climate.”
Attached to the email were company “infection control procedures for projects where social distancing is not feasible,” as well as a flier from the general contractor titled “Gilbane Cares.”
The Gilbane flier said workers should not be on site if they feel sick, have a fever or breathing issues, have traveled outside of government travel restrictions, or have been in contact with someone suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19.
“If you answer NO to all of the above, please come to work,” it states.
Gilbane in a statement said: “The casino, when completed, will bring thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of new taxes to Philadelphia and the Commonwealth, at a time when both will be critically needed. While other gaming companies have cut tens of thousands of jobs in the Commonwealth and shelved planned investments, we are continuing to invest $1 billion in the region to create these new jobs and taxes.”
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) is pushing a bill that appears to be on the fast-track for a vote in the chamber that would reopen all public and private construction activities in the state, as long as they can adhere to social distancing and other CDC-recommended mitigation practices.
Democrats in the chamber have decried the measure, saying it plays to politics and special interests, and have called it a threat to public health.
Lauren Cox, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney, said the city was not involved in Gilbane obtaining a waiver from the state.
Pennsylvania State Police and other law enforcement agencies can cite businesses that stay open despite not providing a life-sustaining service or products, but the agency has handed out only warnings, 205 of them as of Tuesday, except for a few citations to businesses selling liquor.
“The posture has largely been to educate, to inform, to demonstrate to the business, perhaps through virtue of a copy of the governor’s order, what the criteria are,” Lt. Col. Scott Price, the State Police’s deputy commissioner of operations, said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA provides its journalism at no cost to newsrooms across the state as a public good to keep our communities informed and thriving. If you value this service, please give a gift today at spotlightpa.org/donate.
Construction at the massive Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia, which continued during the shutdown based on a waiver, is now facing a closedown. It is not clear the continued project fits the terms of the exemption, according to several news organizations.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“An exemption was granted to Gilbane Construction, but that exemption does not allow for casino construction,” said Casey Smith, the spokesperson for the state Department of Community and Economic Development.Casino construction doesn’t qualify for exemption
While all “nonessential” businesses were ordered closed, the Wolf administration allowed for some exceptions on a per case basis. Maryland-based Cordish Companies, owner of the projected Live! Casino, said in a statement:
“Gov. Wolf’s administration recognized there were many businesses in the state that should be allowed to continue operations with the proper planning and safety protocols in place. The state implemented a system for all businesses in the state to petition the Department of Community and Economic Development for waivers from the governor’s shut-down order. DCED has received over 32,000 requests and issued over 5,600 waivers to date.”
Rhode Island Gilbane Building Co. is the contractor at work on the $700 million casino. The project, originally known as Stadium Casino, includes a casino, hotel, parking garage and a related sports arena, and is going up near the stadiums in South Philadelphia.
Apparently, while some of Gilbane’s projects qualified, others like the casino did not. According to Smith:
“Per guidance, when a company receives an exemption in response to a request in which it specifically identified a particular element of the business as essential to health care or another life-sustaining operation, that exemption only relates to those specified life-sustaining activities.”
That means the ongoing construction will need to cease when it is safe to do so.Philadelphia Casino Construction
“However, all work on the project should be halted once the infrastructure stabilization work is done,” Smith added in comments to an NPR news outlet.Stadium Casino Philadelphia ConstructionA labor union walked off Live! Casino site, citing ‘danger’
Additionally, a major labor union has pulled its workers from the casino project, and several other Philly job sites, according to NPR’s WHYY radio station. The other sites include the Philadelphia Art Museum and the police headquarters.Casino Construction In Philadelphia
The NPR station added in an online posting:
“While some job sites have reopened in Pennsylvania via the waiver process, it is unfortunate that the general contractors on a few of these projects were not complying with the CDC regulations,” wrote Sheet Metal Workers President Gary Masino.
“Because of this, we felt that the workers on those projects were in danger, and it was decided to pull our local 19 members off of those sites.”
Masino told the Inquirer he thought Gilbane had placed his union members in “danger” by not following the CDC guidance.Workers have tested positive at Live! Casino
At least two workers at the job site have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Inquirer. But rather than shutting down, workers were generally advised to self-isolate, according to the news outlets.
Many workers have left the site over past incidents, too. There was even one 15-day shutdown, according to WHYY.
But Cordish maintains that their construction contractor has followed necessary safety and CDC protocols. According to a statement sent to PlayPennsylvania:
“Gilbane, the developer, the Building Trades Council and General Contractors Association worked collectively to develop and approve work protocols that enhanced CDC guidelines. These guidelines have been meticulously followed on the casino project. All involved in the project have the same goals – to build a world-class facility while making the safety of its work force paramount.”Cordish has said it intends to continue construction for now
According to the Inquirer, Cordish said on Monday they intended to keep building.
“In the case of the casino project, the building is still exposed to the elements and requires critical enclosure and infrastructure work to be completed before construction work can be safely paused.”
The company added:
“The safety of all workers on the casino job and all construction jobs in the region is paramount.”Philadelphia Live Casino Construction
But Gilbane and Cordish have not commented on the subsequent statement of the Department of Community and Economic Development spokesman who said they are not following the exemption’s guidelines.Pittsburgh Casino Construction
Cordish executives previously said they aimed to open the casino before the end of the year. How the current situation and impending construction delay will affect that expectation remains to be seen.
Register here: http://gg.gg/xaaxa
https://diarynote.indered.space
In the midst of a pandemic that has shut down the region and hospitalized thousands, dozens of construction workers reported for duty Monday morning at the site of the new Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia.
*The long-delayed Philadelphia casino in the city’s Stadium District hopes to open in 2020. The company behind the project says it will cost $700 million. The World’s Online Gaming Authority Since 1995.
*The Philadelphia Live! Project is one of the largest construction projects currently underway in the state, with the company touting 3,000 direct and indirect construction jobs it is providing. It is also the biggest single addition to the state’s casino template since 2010.
*Casino & Hotel Philadelphia, the incoming entertainment destination is launching an on-site recruitment center in the next few weeks to begin hiring for nearly 2,000 jobs.
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/Patriot-News. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter.
As the coronavirus spread across the region last month and Gov. Tom Wolf ordered a halt to all but life-sustaining business, construction workers on the site of the new Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia fretted that the general contractor wasn’t doing enough to protect them from being infected.
Gilbane Building Company, having obtained a waiver from the state, continued work on the $700 million casino, one of the most expensive projects in the city. Hundreds of workers traveled to the site on Packer Avenue near Citizens Bank Park — some from as far away as New York and Maryland.
Then a worker who had been on the job for two days in mid-March tested positive for COVID-19.
“Yesterday afternoon we were notified that a taper that worked on the Live! Hotel & Casino project tested positive for the COVID-19 virus,” Gilbane project executive Dan Kelley wrote in a March 26 email, listing people who might have had contact with the infected man.
Some workers responded by walking off the site, convinced that Gilbane was not taking the coronavirus seriously.
On Monday, sheet metal workers left after their union head said they were “in danger” because the company was ignoring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention precautions.
“We were like, ‘We’re not working here,’” said a construction worker who asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation. “Most of our guys felt this was bull crap. Some of these guys don’t care, but this spreads like wildfire.”
Then on Tuesday morning, workers were told in another email from Kelley that a first-shift medic who oriented new hires and did drug screening had tested positive for the virus. The medic had worked on site between March 11 and March 25, according to the email. Kelley advised those who’ve had contact with him to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Gilbane, an international development company, said it had been allowed to push ahead with construction by obtaining a waiver from the Wolf administration to continue operating. But the administration has given few details about how the waiver process works and has refused repeated requests to provide a list of which businesses applied to reopen, what they said their life-sustaining business is, and why they were approved or denied.
As of Monday, Gilbane said it was planning to keep building. But state officials now say the waiver is being misused.
“An exemption was granted to Gilbane Construction, but that exemption does not allow for casino construction,” Casey Smith, a spokesperson for the state Department of Community and Economic Development, said Monday, replying to questions from the Inquirer and Spotlight PA.
The waiver was granted to Gilbane only for those “projects that pose [a] public safety hazard’ and need more work to safely close down, “health care construction,” and, in one case, completing a much-needed Philadelphia school, Smith said.
“Per guidance, when a company receives an exemption in response to a request in which it specifically identified a particular element of the business as essential to health care or another life-sustaining operation, that exemption only relates to those specified life-sustaining activities,” Smith said.
Gilbane declined this week to answer questions about how many workers at the casino site tested positive or negative for COVID-19 or how it obtained the exemption to the state shutdown.
Nor did Cordish Cos., the Baltimore-based casino operator and developer that took control of the project developer, Stadium Casino LLC, in November 2018.
“In the case of the casino project, the building is still exposed to the elements and requires critical enclosure and infrastructure work to be completed before construction work can be safely paused,” Cordish said in a statement Monday. “The safety of all workers on the casino job and all construction jobs in the region is paramount.”
Gary Masino, president of Sheet Metal Workers’ Local 19, sent a letter to his members Monday informing them that they were being pulled from the casino site, as well as two other Philadelphia job sites — The Philadelphia Art Museum and the city’s police administration building — because union leadership felt general contractors there were “not complying with the CDC regulations and preventative precautions” regarding the coronavirus.
“We felt that the workers on those projects were in danger,” Masino wrote.
Philadelphia casino news. But Cordish said the company has adopted protocols consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, including social-distancing requirements, handwashing stations, and staggered shifts to limit the number of workers on site together.
Those rules haven’t always been followed, workers say.
In an April 1 email to his employees, a subcontractor said he had been informed that day that a casino site worker had previously tested positive for COVID-19, but that workers were to return to the site on Monday after it was deemed safe.
“PPE (personal protective equipment) is extremely scarce as most understand at this point and we will continue to refine and change our program based on this,” wrote Michael Jackson, vice president of Philadelphia D&M, which specializes in framing, drywall, and carpentry. “We look forward to finishing this project with the vigor we started with, all the while keeping YOU, our employees and multiemployer trade partners as safe as we can in our current climate.”
Attached to the email were company “infection control procedures for projects where social distancing is not feasible,” as well as a flier from the general contractor titled “Gilbane Cares.”
The Gilbane flier said workers should not be on site if they feel sick, have a fever or breathing issues, have traveled outside of government travel restrictions, or have been in contact with someone suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19.
“If you answer NO to all of the above, please come to work,” it states.
Gilbane in a statement said: “The casino, when completed, will bring thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions of new taxes to Philadelphia and the Commonwealth, at a time when both will be critically needed. While other gaming companies have cut tens of thousands of jobs in the Commonwealth and shelved planned investments, we are continuing to invest $1 billion in the region to create these new jobs and taxes.”
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) is pushing a bill that appears to be on the fast-track for a vote in the chamber that would reopen all public and private construction activities in the state, as long as they can adhere to social distancing and other CDC-recommended mitigation practices.
Democrats in the chamber have decried the measure, saying it plays to politics and special interests, and have called it a threat to public health.
Lauren Cox, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney, said the city was not involved in Gilbane obtaining a waiver from the state.
Pennsylvania State Police and other law enforcement agencies can cite businesses that stay open despite not providing a life-sustaining service or products, but the agency has handed out only warnings, 205 of them as of Tuesday, except for a few citations to businesses selling liquor.
“The posture has largely been to educate, to inform, to demonstrate to the business, perhaps through virtue of a copy of the governor’s order, what the criteria are,” Lt. Col. Scott Price, the State Police’s deputy commissioner of operations, said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA provides its journalism at no cost to newsrooms across the state as a public good to keep our communities informed and thriving. If you value this service, please give a gift today at spotlightpa.org/donate.
Construction at the massive Live! Hotel & Casino in South Philadelphia, which continued during the shutdown based on a waiver, is now facing a closedown. It is not clear the continued project fits the terms of the exemption, according to several news organizations.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:
“An exemption was granted to Gilbane Construction, but that exemption does not allow for casino construction,” said Casey Smith, the spokesperson for the state Department of Community and Economic Development.Casino construction doesn’t qualify for exemption
While all “nonessential” businesses were ordered closed, the Wolf administration allowed for some exceptions on a per case basis. Maryland-based Cordish Companies, owner of the projected Live! Casino, said in a statement:
“Gov. Wolf’s administration recognized there were many businesses in the state that should be allowed to continue operations with the proper planning and safety protocols in place. The state implemented a system for all businesses in the state to petition the Department of Community and Economic Development for waivers from the governor’s shut-down order. DCED has received over 32,000 requests and issued over 5,600 waivers to date.”
Rhode Island Gilbane Building Co. is the contractor at work on the $700 million casino. The project, originally known as Stadium Casino, includes a casino, hotel, parking garage and a related sports arena, and is going up near the stadiums in South Philadelphia.
Apparently, while some of Gilbane’s projects qualified, others like the casino did not. According to Smith:
“Per guidance, when a company receives an exemption in response to a request in which it specifically identified a particular element of the business as essential to health care or another life-sustaining operation, that exemption only relates to those specified life-sustaining activities.”
That means the ongoing construction will need to cease when it is safe to do so.Philadelphia Casino Construction
“However, all work on the project should be halted once the infrastructure stabilization work is done,” Smith added in comments to an NPR news outlet.Stadium Casino Philadelphia ConstructionA labor union walked off Live! Casino site, citing ‘danger’
Additionally, a major labor union has pulled its workers from the casino project, and several other Philly job sites, according to NPR’s WHYY radio station. The other sites include the Philadelphia Art Museum and the police headquarters.Casino Construction In Philadelphia
The NPR station added in an online posting:
“While some job sites have reopened in Pennsylvania via the waiver process, it is unfortunate that the general contractors on a few of these projects were not complying with the CDC regulations,” wrote Sheet Metal Workers President Gary Masino.
“Because of this, we felt that the workers on those projects were in danger, and it was decided to pull our local 19 members off of those sites.”
Masino told the Inquirer he thought Gilbane had placed his union members in “danger” by not following the CDC guidance.Workers have tested positive at Live! Casino
At least two workers at the job site have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Inquirer. But rather than shutting down, workers were generally advised to self-isolate, according to the news outlets.
Many workers have left the site over past incidents, too. There was even one 15-day shutdown, according to WHYY.
But Cordish maintains that their construction contractor has followed necessary safety and CDC protocols. According to a statement sent to PlayPennsylvania:
“Gilbane, the developer, the Building Trades Council and General Contractors Association worked collectively to develop and approve work protocols that enhanced CDC guidelines. These guidelines have been meticulously followed on the casino project. All involved in the project have the same goals – to build a world-class facility while making the safety of its work force paramount.”Cordish has said it intends to continue construction for now
According to the Inquirer, Cordish said on Monday they intended to keep building.
“In the case of the casino project, the building is still exposed to the elements and requires critical enclosure and infrastructure work to be completed before construction work can be safely paused.”
The company added:
“The safety of all workers on the casino job and all construction jobs in the region is paramount.”Philadelphia Live Casino Construction
But Gilbane and Cordish have not commented on the subsequent statement of the Department of Community and Economic Development spokesman who said they are not following the exemption’s guidelines.Pittsburgh Casino Construction
Cordish executives previously said they aimed to open the casino before the end of the year. How the current situation and impending construction delay will affect that expectation remains to be seen.
Register here: http://gg.gg/xaaxa
https://diarynote.indered.space
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