This weekend is the Festival in the Park at Ballou Park in Danville, with arts, crafts, entertainment and children’s activities. ▪ The permanent casino, under construction, is expected to open in late 2024 and will have: a 500-room hotel and a gaming floor with more than 1,300 slots, 85 live table games, 24 electronic table games, a poker room and a Caesars Sportsbook, along with a full-service spa, pool, bars, restaurants, a 2,500-seat theater for live entertainment and 40,000 square feet of convention space.) There are another 28 electronic table games for Blackjack, Roulette and Craps. ▪ The temporary casino offers 740 of “the newest and most popular slot machine titles,” according to the company, along with 25 live table games, including Blackjack, Roulette and Baccarat. Wednesday, less than 48 hours after it opened to the public, the space smelled faintly of cigarettes.

A vaulted ceiling helps dissipate the smoke and vape fumes, but at 2 a.m. Smoking is allowed – you left North Carolina three miles back – and ashtrays are posited next to clusters of machines and at live gaming tables. The casino is basically one large open space with a few partitions to section off some groups of games.

Some Durham residents can get there in under an hour, making it an easy weekend outing or even a midweek after-work excursion.

How far is the Virginia casino from the Triangle?Ĭaesar’s Virginia, a partnership between Caesar’s, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee and the City of Danville, is 90 minutes away or less from the Triangle. The finishing plant building and other structures had sat empty since 2007 and have been demolished, but Caesers kept the plant’s three smokestacks and will incorporate those into the resort’s design, a tribute to Danville’s textile history. The tent is on the site of the future resort, where once stood the Schoolfield campus of Dan River Mills textiles. While a permanent facility is under construction, a temporary casino is open for business in what looks like the world’s largest wedding reception tent - a 40,000-square-foot, climate-controlled rectangle about the length of a football field.

Here’s what to expect if you venture out.

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