By SCOTT MCKIE B.P.
ONE FEATHER STAFF
Little Miss Cherokee Nevayah Panther and Principal Chief Richard G. Sneed cut the ribbon on Aug. 30 to officially open the UltraStar Multi-Tainment Center at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort. Since then, many of the employees hired at the Center are EBCI tribal members.
“About 35 percent of our 140 employees are tribal,” said Dan Terry, UltraStar Multi-Tainment Center at Harrah’s Cherokee general manager. “So, we’re well on track there. A lot of them are minors. They’re youths, and it’s their first job. It’s great to be able to work them, train them, and mold work ethic.”
Terry spoke highly of those tribal employees. “They’re great! They’re energetic and smiling. Our core values, CPR, are courtesy, professionalism, and respect; and they obviously all show that. I think they’re just excited to be here. It’s a fun job.”
TIME TO BOWL: Moments after the ribbon was cut on the UltraStar Multi-Tainment Center at Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort in August, Edith Crowe, an EBCI tribal elder, was on the lanes enjoying a game of bowling. (SCOTT MCKIE B.P./One Feather)
He noted that the Multi-Tainment Center is doing “very well” since opening. “We are very heavy into sports on the weekends with college football on Saturdays, NFL on Sundays. We have a lot of programming throughout the week to get people in, but we’re definitely doing well on the weekends. And, I think for holidays and summer breaks, this place is just going to thrive.”
Construction started last month on an UltraStar Multi-Tainment Center at the Valley River Casino & Hotel in Murphy. “It’s going to be a little bit smaller,” said Terry who noted the Multi-Tainment Center in Cherokee is around 55,000 square feet with the Murphy Center coming in at around 35,000 – 40,000 square feet.
“We’re still going to have the restaurant component,” he noted. “There will be about 250 seats within the restaurant without the live stage. We’re going to have 16 lanes of bowling and probably 25 arcade games with a redemption center.”
The Murphy Center is being built by Robins & Morton, the same firm that built the Cherokee Center, with a tentative opening set for June 2018. Terry said he expects around 100 jobs to be created at the Murphy site. “We’re hoping to develop some team members here that would want to move over there and possibly taking on management positions. There is a lot of opportunity.”
Terry added, “Our website, www.ultrastarnc.com, will list all of our fun themes we have going on each day from Unlimited Bowling on Mondays to Trivia on Tuesdays to Half-Price Arcade Wednesdays. We have fun every day of the week, and we are the destination that people will want to come to watch sports. We have amazing screens in Sound Bytes, and we have screens in the lanes too. So, you can come have some fun and watch your favorite teams on the big screen.”
