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RON PATEL


Ron shows the way G


Casino manager Ron Patel was recently voted Citizen of the Year by his peers – and is an example to everyone in the industry for good reason


aming often gets a bad name, particularly in the press, so it’s up to the members of that industry to prove doubters and critics wrong by example. Ron Patel, General Manager of the Black


Oak Casino in Tuolumne County, in Northern California’s foothills, was voted by his peers their Citizen of the Year – and it’s not just good corporate responsibility practices, Ron goes a step further within his community to really engage with people and make a difference. The casino Ron manages comprises three floors, with the 70,000 square-foot gaming floor in the middle. It boasts 1200 slots, 24 table games, an entertainment lounge, 24-hour specialty coffee bar, and 3 restaurants. Unusually in a casino, the lower floor is the ‘family’


floor. In Native American culture, the family is a very important element, so the offering includes a 24-lane


Right: Citizen of the Year Ron Patel


bowling centre, a sports bar and grill, a 70-machine amusement arcade and a fast food outlet. The top floor is taken up with administration


offices, surveillance, and a fine dining experience called “Seven Sisters”.


Casino International: Ron, how did you end up as General Manager of such an operation, and becoming the area’s Citizen of the Year? Ron Patel: We all make plans, goals and objectives in our lives and what I’ve learned over the years is that’s although this is good to have. you also need to allow for the unplanned routes that we find ourselves on. I started out in this business in 1973 when I first joined the Rank Organization with Top Rank Clubs, and thought at that time this would be my career; I’m destined to work with one company (as you did at that time) for the rest of my working days. However, after 15 years with Rank in the U.K., I decided that this was a little too narrow for me, and that I wanted to branch out. By the end of the eighties I had reached a senior executive position and Rank were looking to move overseas. They sent me to look at various countries, including Ireland, Denmark and North America. At that time we thought Canada was a place where casinos were about to start. It seemed a good idea to get a foothold in Canada ready for when casinos would take off there. So in 1989 I transferred with Rank to Canada to take up the position of President of their subsidiary company based in Toronto, together with my wife and two young children, who were five and nine at that time. We thought Canada was going to be our new home and we had no thoughts of moving to the U.S. at that time. It turned out after a couple of years in Canada


casinos weren’t going to happen there so Rank asked me to transfer back to the UK. As we had already made a big move and commitment to North America I wanted to look at other options before doing that. So looking over the border into the U.S., Native American Gaming was just about starting. I thought, this looked like a good opportunity and certainly very different to anything I’d done previously. It was a different environment. The U.S. was not in Rank’s plans at all, so I left them and joined a management company that was working with several Indian Tribes. For the first few years I worked with the Oneida


52 MARCH 2012


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