Brian Carr

Sure, I'm Brian Carr, and I'm the President and Chief Operating Officer of Sands Bethlehem. I've been President for about two years now, but I've been with the property for four.

So my day-to-day job very much is overseeing the employees, making sure that we put people in the right places to provide a first-class gaming experience to our guests when they come in. We are very unique in the fact that we're extremely busy every single day of the week. We rely heavily on bus operations so as a result we don't really have a down day throughout the week. And so a big part of my job is making sure that the experience, whether you come on a Tuesday or on a Saturday night, is very consistent. And then of course the final part of it is being the contact to the greater community area, working with the local mayor, working with other leaders within the Lehigh Valley to make sure that Sands is represented and that we are a good community partner.

Sands Bethlehem is about three and a half percent of Las Vegas Sands. It was Las 00:01:00Vegas Sands' first real foray into an American market outside of Las Vegas, and we work on a daily basis with the Las Vegas Sands' team in getting capital, working and continuing to expand our marketing programs, and really reach out not only in Pennsylvania but into north Jersey and into New York.

I think it would be a mistake to come to a site like where Bethlehem Steel was and what it meant to the country for all those years, and then also what it meant to the Greater Lehigh Valley and also Pennsylvania for that matter and not pay homage to it. We do an awful lot obviously as you walk through the casino and you can see an awful lot of the architecture and themes kind of carry through the entire building. We have a lot of people who actually worked at 00:02:00Bethlehem Steel come in say it's great how we retrofitted a building to make it a casino, even though it's a completely new building. So that's actually shows us that we did the right thing, and that that kind of carried through. But we also don't just stop there. We have space for the local Steelworkers Archive. We work with them and give them space in the building so that people can come and experience their history. We worked with--to establish the Hoover Mason Trestle with the Redevelopment Authority. We gave land to Artsquest and a couple other groups in order to make sure that the overall area is just kind of maintaining them, and the memory of Bethlehem Steel is always there.

Well, when you're one of the largest employers in the area where you are, like we are, where we have over 2,500 employees, and then our third-party vendors within the building have nearly seven hundred employees in the building. So we're talking about thirty two hundred people that live and work here. You know 00:03:0092% of our employees live in the state of Pennsylvania, and 82% of them live in the Lehigh Valley. So as a result you want to be a good corporate partner because one, it's the right thing to do, but two it's your employees that are out there in that community so you want to make sure you're taking care of them. We do an awful lot with the Hispanic Center. We do a lot with Donegan. We do an awful lot with Victory House. We helped donate the land that got Artsquest off the ground and SteelStacks. We also gave land for PBS39. Since we've been open we've donated nearly 4 million dollars to charitable causes in the area.

Las Vegas Sands really focuses on their people, the community, and then sustainability. And so the people we've talked about an awful lot which is you give people good jobs, you give them an opportunity to get to the next level and 00:04:00really rise themselves up. You know, in Bethlehem here, our average salary last year with benefits was nearly $45,000. That far outpaces anything in the Lehigh Valley, and as a result we offer great jobs. And then you get into sustainability. You know Sands Cares and Sands Eco360 where we do an awful lot to focus on sustainability efforts, energy-efficiency, recycling, making sure that we're building a better planet. And then that feeds right into the Clean the World Initiative where we make 40,000 kits, which are personal hygiene kits which we give to United Way, Hispanic Center, a lot of the homeless shelters in the area so that we can help those that are less fortunate than us.

I think all you have to do is walk our building and realize that you've got a 00:05:00282 room hotel that runs nearly 96% occupancy. You've got a mall outlet. You've got a entertainment center that brings in over eighty acts a year that, to be honest with you, are not playing the Lehigh Valley area without our support and bringing them in. Last year we had Britney Spears. This year we've got Mariah Carey. Jerry Seinfeld was here at the end of last year. These are all acts that would not be playing in the Lehigh Valley without having that attraction. I think when you add in the bars and the nightclubs and Buddy V's and Emeril Lagasse and our involvement in the Food and Wine Festival. We really bring an awful lot more to the area rather than just there's casino gaming.

You know, I love the Greater Lehigh Valley area. I've only lived here four years, but by far it's my favorite place I've ever lived. I've been in gaming 00:06:00coming up on 20 years; this is my tenth property and my sixth jurisdiction so I've gotten around quite a bit. And being a part of this community and kind of getting welcomed with open arms and being able to be the leader of a first-rate organization like this in the Lehigh Valley has gone a long way for me, and it's something that gives me a lot of personal satisfaction. But the thing I'm most proud of really is our employees. You know, I write personal letters to everybody that gets promoted, and in my two years as president I've written over 500 letters to our people. So if you think about the fact that there's 2,500 people, we have promoted nearly a fifth of everybody that works in this building into a higher level job than what they originally came in door as. That's the thing that's most proud for me is when I run into somebody and they're now a supervisor in P.A.D. and I remember when they came through new hire. That's really the personal satisfaction because it's not only what they're doing in the building, it's what you know they're now doing for their family and that goes a 00:07:00long way.

You know, back when I first got in the industry, there were really only four or five markets in the US that had gaming, and there were a couple others that had some Native American casinos, but not really widespread in that time. You're getting to a point now, especially on the East Coast, where almost every major state has some form of legalized gaming in their market, and that's really kind of changed the game. Before when you were just Atlantic City, the alternative for somebody was either you went to Atlantic City or you got on the plane for four hours and flew to Vegas. And now that's not an option so what that's really made us do is you have to become more. And that's really what you're seeing at this property is you can't just offer slots and tables and poker and just expect the people come. You have to give them a first-rate hotel. You've got to have shopping. You've got to have great restaurants. You've got to have other reasons 00:08:00that they would come to your building rather than go to somebody else.

You know, the future of this property is really bright. You know we've-we've grown on a significant level far outpacing what the rest of the state has done over the course of the last five years. I would look for that continue. I see us continuing to diversify our offerings. I see that we continue to mature in our marketing efforts, and that we'll create a lot more employment opportunities. I hope to see our employee number significantly grow in the coming years. And then also partnerships that we'll be able to do with others in the community that will help stimulate additional growth. Some of the things that we've already started to do you're starting to see an awful lot more of development going on in the South Side right now, and I would like to think that a large part of that 00:09:00is because of the excitement around what we're doing here.