Cornazar was able to provide a space for conversation between members of the Medellin Mayor's Office and operators of localized games, creating a space for construction between both actors so that the casino operators from their ailments could understand the decisions taken by the local government and these in turn would expose to them which are the main challenges that should be worked on.
The meeting took place in the technological platform ZOOM with the Secretary of Development, Alejandro Arias, who participated on behalf of the Mayor's Office of Medellin and about a dozen operators were also present.
Alejandro explained how the mayor's office was working to start reactivating economic sectors in a safe way, an example he gave on how they are doing it was the success case of the restaurants and bars located on Provenza Street. For one of the strategies used by the team of Daniel Quintero, current mayor of Medellin has been to make smart investments avoiding subsidies that only become temporary solutions.
"We closed Provenza Street, we made an important investment in lighting and adequacy, in other words we made it beautiful. And now the restaurants and bars in that area bill much more than they did even before the pandemic," said Arias.
This success story was an example of what the city of Medellin is trying to achieve in several sectors, among them the localized games, for which Arias asked those present to think of similar ideas to be presented and to look for their possible materialization. Because "In spite of Medellin being a city with good economic resources, we do not have the capacity to create subsidies especially for casinos, we must think of other options with which we can also achieve a positive impact" explained the Secretary.
Although the meeting did not result in any commitment, some ideas were put forward to be worked on by both the Mayor's Office and Cornazar and the casino operators in the city, these were thought under three verticals: security, procedures and opening or sustainability of the sector.
The idea was to use the external cameras to the casino and connect them directly to 123 so that in case of any security scourge in the establishment there would be a real time response from the authorities to attend the event.
According to Arias, this is a process that has been done in other industries such as the construction industry, where they went from having about 80 procedures for a project to reduce it currently to 33.
In the absence of subsidies and preferring an investment in economic reactivation due to the greater positive impact demonstrated, several of the operators proposed a strategy similar to that of Provenza in the Bolivar Corridor, an area where there are a significant number of casinos in Medellin.
In short, the Secretary assured that they will begin to work much more closely with the gambling sector located in Medellin to seek guarantees and opportunities for economic reactivation in a safe way. In addition, yesterday the new measures that will be in force in the city were established with a curfew from 8 pm to 5 am the following day from Monday to Friday and a continuous curfew from Friday to Monday, which will allow the casinos in the city to have one more day of operation in order to generate resources to keep their operation afloat.
