A prospective investor has filed an application with the V.I. Casino Control Commission, the first step toward actually building a hotel-casino on St. Croix.
Eileen Petersen, CCC chairwoman, announced Monday that Golden Gaming LLC has filed a casino license application, the fourth filed with the CCC since 1996. The application is for a Tier II hotel-casino that will be built on the east end of St. Croix, Petersen said.
Licensing fees for a Tier II hotel, which must have 300 to 1,400 rooms and a 10,000-square-foot casino, are $200,000 for the first two years. A second two-year license costs $175,000.
Petersen said the next step for Golden Gaming will be an intensive background check by the V.I. Division of Gaming Enforcement. How long that will take is unknown, she said.
"Until we get a clean report . . . I am unable to say without specificity how long it will take," Petersen said.
St. Croix’s first casino, the Divi Carina Bay Resort, opened in March 2000. A second application by a Colorado-based company was rejected by the CCC after the company proposed that it would need to add the mandated amount of rooms over time.
The third application was taken out by Mario de Chabert, a St. Croix businessman and attorney. His project, an eight-story, 193-room casino-hotel on his family's property near Sunny Isle Shopping Center, could break ground by the end of the year.
Petersen confirmed that de Chabert has paid 50 percent of his licensing fee and filed preliminary paperwork for the application that he first filed in 1999. Remaining steps include:
— Intensive background check on the casino's management;
— Verification of the project's financial viability;
— A feasibility study to determine if the island can support a second casino;
— Public hearings;
— Payment of remainder of the license application fee.
