At Bally’s Rhode Island casinos, Craig Sculos navigated the state’s economic powerhouse through COVID

Saturday, August 20, 2022 3:52 PM
  • John A. Lahtinen, Providence Business News

With just six hours of notice, Bally’s Corp.’s Twin River Lincoln and Tiverton casinos were required to close in the middle of a high-volume Friday evening in March 2020 as COVID-19 took hold of Rhode Island. Initially, the casinos’ expectations were to reopen within a couple of weeks, said Craig Sculos, Bally’s Tiverton Casino and Hotel’s vice president and general manager and senior vice president of Rhode Island regulatory for both Ocean State-based gaming facilities.

“Those couple of weeks stretched into months, followed by a reopening with an exacting series of safety-driven restrictions that spanned nearly a year,” Sculos said.

Sculos and his team had to develop and implement an operational plan, including a state-regulated sanitizing regimen for the 160,000-square-foot Tiverton facility.