NATCHEZ — The Isle of Capri opened noon Friday after six long weeks of closure.

“We received our approval from the Mississippi Gaming Association at noon today, and basically we’d had our team members come in and starting at about 8 or 9 a.m., because we had a few last-minute things to get done and tweak and clean up,” Isle of Capri Vice President and General Manager Tony Scudiero said.

Scudiero said the casino had a busload of 10 people pull up at approximately noon. Anyone who visited the casino Friday got a free T-shirt and by 4:30 p.m., more than 200 shirts had been handed out, Scudiero said.

“A lot of our regular guests haven’t had much to do in the last 40 days, and now that we’re open we’ve got something more for them to do as far as entertainment,” he said.

The reopening didn’t come without hard work.

“We had to get the mud cleaned up, everything repainted, fences built,” he said. “Everything we went through for those 40 days or so to get where we are now took a lot of teamwork, and I’m very proud of this team.”

City Engineer David Gardner said on the city’s end, everything was good to go Friday morning after the area of Silver Street in front of the casino opened.

“The city had to sign a letter saying the sewage was fine, the water was OK and the traffic (on Silver Street) was OK,” he said. “We did that several days ago.”