Operator News
Argentina – Future of landmark casino in Necochea looks bleak
By Phil - 29 January 2020
The local Secretary of the Government, Jorge Martínez, has spoken of the decline of the once well known Necochea casino on the Atlantic coast saying that its fate will now have to be decided.
“The pictures speak for themselves: we find ourselves with a completely abandoned and decaying complex, there have been many years of lack of interest and lack of investment. It is very sad,” he said after an extensive inspection of the site with a group of designers to check the structural status of the building.
The official stressed that “we wanted everyone to know, not only those who have political responsibility, but also the population and members of the local community, the state in which we received the facilities from the Casino complex. It obliges us to make a political decision quickly on the fate of these installations. ”
Martínez said that “. . . the idea is to make a decision, but as everyone knows, the Executive Department today lacks the resources necessary to make some type of investment. It is impossible that, given the financial situation that the municipality is going through, that we can face the expenses generated by this whole place, so we will need the support of the private sector to put value into it.”
The president of the Deliberative Council, Hernán Trigo Gutiérrez, emphasized that “the images are alarming, we all knew about the state of abandonment that the building presented, but in recent times it has had a huge deterioration due to the lack of maintenance and investment and the fall of the concessions” which left it as a result in “an unfortunate general state.”
He also stressed that despite the best intentions “it is impossible to think of a repair by the municipality today, we are talking about a huge amount of work for a completely unfeasible municipality, but we are obliged to make a decision and solve this because it represents a serious risk to people.”
In 2017 The Lottery and Casinos Institute announced that it had decided to definitively close the Necochea casino after it was found to be consistently running at a loss generating an income of just over $3.5m while costing $39.5m a year to maintain. There was a chance that it would become the site of a casino once again and there had been talk of tying to keep the iconic building open. However ex Governor of the province of Buenos Aires María Eugenia Vidal decided not to include the casino in the latest tender process for the casino in Buenos Aires meaning that it would close for good.
Necochea is located in the southwest of Buenos Aires Province on the Atlantic coast and the casino is one of the city’s landmarks. Constructed in 1973 and located on the beachfront the building also houses cafes, a shopping arcade, a bowling alley, a bar, a billiard room, a skating rink as well as the casino. The Complejo Casino is one of the city’s most iconic buildings but it has been beset by problems. The casino was closed down by the Provincial Institute of Lottery and Casinos ( IPLyC) and was temporarily housed in a nearby theatre in 2015 for urgent repairs as the building posed a safety risk. This was after two tourists fell from the railing of a balcony. It was the third time the casino has been shut down having also been shut down in 1988 and 1994.
