Atlantic City’s Borgata giving hotel rooms $50 million facelift

At a time when Atlantic City casinos are selling in the $30 million range, it is no small thing that one property is spending $50 million just to renovate its hotel rooms.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa is giving nearly 1,600 rooms a facelift to keep them fresh in the region’s hypercompetitive gaming market, including the arrival of a brand new rival on April 2, the $2.4 billion Revel casino.

“We feel this hotel product rivals any other on the East Coast,” Joe Lupo, Borgata’s senior vice president of operations, said Monday during a tour of the renovations.

Lupo said Borgata has been working on the designs for about two years and would have done the room upgrades regardless of Revel. The timing of the renovations, though, coincides with Revel’s opening, giving Borgata an updated look to fight its younger competitor.bookscanner02

“This redesign will ensure that we continue to deliver the world-class, luxury resort experience our guests have come to expect from Borgata,” said Robert Boughner, the casino’s chief operating officer.

Besides wanting to give its rooms a spiffier appearance, Borgata needed to renovate simply because of the normal daily wear and tear on the hotel,divinglamp Lupo explained.

“Rooms get beat up because of the turnover every day,” he said.

Borgata is little more than halfway through the project, scheduled for completion in July. Altogether,lightbulbs 1,566 guest rooms are getting an extreme makeover, not just a cosmetic touch-up.

“It’s top to bottom,” Lupo said. “It’s not a refreshening. It’s a redesign — a whole new feeling when you walk into each floor.”

Guests will notice a dramatic new color scheme in the rooms and hallways. The muted earth tones that dominated the hotel before are being replaced with black,bikelight shades of gray and splashes of pink in the carpeting and wallpaper.

Rooms have also been spruced up with contemporary furniture, artwork and new technology. Bulky television sets have been replaced by 46-inch, flat-screen LED high-definition TVs.

Guests will also have access to wireless, high-speed Internet service. Rooms will also have a Bittel integrated phone unit offering multimedia features, including speakers, a clock radio, iPod charger and a USB charge port.

Lupo noted the dramatic changes in technology since Borgata first opened in July 2003. Old-fashioned tube TV sets and old-style phones that lacked multimedia capability are disappearing as part of the renovations.

However, some things about Borgata will remain the same. Lupo said the hotel retains its “edgy” feel. The adults-only atmosphere includes glass-enclosed shower stalls built for two and provocative “Tidy Up/Tied Up” doorknob hangers for each room.

“We definitely carry on the edge,” Lupo said.

Borgata has more hotel rooms than any other Atlantic City casino. Its main 2,000-room tower, where the renovations are being done, was joined in 2008 by the 800-room, boutique-style Water Club. The Water Club cost $400 million and followed a $200 million expansion of Borgata’s casino floor and restaurants in 2006.

Since 2006, the Atlantic City market has been battered by the weak economy and competition from casinos in surrounding states, particularly Pennsylvania. With Atlantic City gaming revenue plunging nearly 40 percent — $5.2 billion in 2006 to $3.3 billion in 2011 — the casinos have stopped sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into expansion projects.

Along with the declining revenue, casino prices have plummeted,ledtube too. In the most recent sales, Resorts Casino Hotel went for $31.5 million in December 2010 and the former Trump Marina Hotel Casino, now known as the Golden Nugget Atlantic City, fetched $38 million last May.

Mass Effect 3 Review – We’ll Be Able To Fly, Don’t Fear The Reapers

As I sit here with the final credits rolling,Energy efficient and high quality t8 divinglamp147,flexible led strip,led light from Shengjing Optoelectronic manufacturer of LED lighting fixtures. it would be all too easy for me to throw a metric ton of hyperbole at Mass Effect 3. Best game in the series? A fast paced, exciting, emotional rollercoaster that will leave you breathless in its final moments? Mass Effect 3 is all of those things, but it’s still so much more than that.

It’s the culmination of Shepard’s tale, tying together all the lose ends and uniting the best aspects of previous Mass Effect games into one, amazingly cohesive whole. And all of that is to say nothing of the game’s surprisingly fun and deep cooperative mode. BioWare pulled out all the stops here and have delivered the grand finale this series deserved. I came, I saw, I conquered, I got drunk and passed out on Aria T’loak’s couch.

If you’re unfamiliar with the events of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, my advice is to go play those first. EA and BioWare have gone to great lengths to make the game accessible to newcomers (even allowing you choose to focus on conversations and making combat easier, or focusing on combat and making conversations play out as cutscenes). Even so, you’ll still get the most out of the experience if you know the history. There are more than a few inside jokes and references you’re bound to miss if you don’t.

The story in Mass Effect 3 revolves around, you guessed it, the Reaper invasion, though of course, there’s more to it than that. It begins with the Reaper invasion of Earth – the event Shepard has spent two games trying to warn everybody about. The overarching plot involves Shepard’s struggle to complete a Prothean super weapon called the Crucible, all while uniting the Galaxy’s biggest players and readying the Galaxy’s various regions for war.

As if that task didn’t seem daunting enough, Cerberus, led by the ever enigmatic Illusive Man, has got their own plans for humanity, the Reapers, and the Galaxy at large. They always seem to turn up at the most inopportune times and places, giving Shepard and company grief the entire way. It’ll be up to Shepard and friends to figure out what the Illusive man is up to, and stop him, if possible.

As with its predecessors, Mass Effect 3 makes you face a lot of hard choices along the way. Some choices are decided in conversation, others through your actions, and all come with their own rewards and consequences, big and small. Everything from deciding arguments between random civilians on the Citadel, to choosing whether an entire race lives, to the final, breathtaking decision at the end. It may be the heaviest, most impactful decision you’ll ever have to make in a video game.

In the previous Mass Effect games, you had Charisma/Intimidation and Persuasion stats governing your Paragon and Renegade decisions, and could be upgraded using Skill Points when you leveled up. Doing so would grant you more dialogue options depending on whether you were going for Renegade or Paragon progression.We are professional ledtube.

Mass Effect 3,Your own Tiny flashlight. on the other hand, employs a new system. Rather than giving you speech-based stats to upgrade, you now have a Reputation meter with a number of thresholds along the way. As you engage in conversations, your Reputation will build, and as you reach each threshold, you will obtain new dialogue options. At first, it seems like an unnecessary change, but its true beauty soon becomes evident when you realize it makes for a much more flexible game. You’re no longer left out in the cold if you want to make a mixture of Paragon and Renegade decisions, as both of them contribute to your overall Reputation.

Structurally,See and Be Seen on the streets with the best lightingbright system. the game is very similar to its predecessors. The Citadel makes its return as a hub of sorts,Riding a bicycle around the city at night can be a perilous pastime, but a new bikelight369 could make life safer in the cycle lane. containing shops and some actual sights to see, as well as being your main source of smaller, collection-based side quests. The main quests are appropriately grandiose, but are generally more involving than in the previous games – many of them now being multi-part affairs.

For example, Shepard’s quest to gain aid for Earth leads him to discover that Earth isn’t the only planet under attack by the Reapers. Early on, you’ll find out that the Turian homeworld, Palaven, is also under heavy bombardment, as the Turians comprise the bulk of the galaxy’s military might. In order to gain their aid, you must first ensure that Palaven will not be left undefended. To do this, you must enlist the help of the Krogan, who, after the Genophage sterilized them all, hold a centuries old grudge against the Turians. As you might expect, the Krogan need Shepard to meet some of their own conditions if they’re to assist Palaven, thereby freeing up Turian forces to help Earth.