Gary, Indiana, Is Pinning Its Hopes on Riverboat Gambling
If casino gambling can spark economic development in Gary, Indiana, it can probably work anywhere. And it's not too early to ask if it is working. Gaming, as the industry calls it, began in Gary on June 11, 1996. Two "riverboats" opened for business on Lake Michigan that day: the Majestic Star Casino, owned by Detroit entrepreneur Donald Barden, and the Trump Casino, owned by a different Donald.
The two boats compete for customers but share dockside restaurant and parking facilities. For something over a quarter of a billion dollars in development costs, together the boats offer 3,715 "gaming positions" in 80,301 square feet of space, where you can wager on games traditional and electronic.
"From an economic development perspective, it has been a boon for us," says Gary economic development director Ben Clement. "But Gary was in pretty dire straits when they came in. We didn't have a whole lot of options.... We were facing downsizing in the steel industry, outmigration of the population, air pollution, the image of a crime capital, and infrastructure problems"....
According to reports filed with the Indiana Gaming Commission by the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana University-Purdue University, more than three million people visited each of the Gary casinos in fiscal 1997-98, generating gross gaming receipts of more than $220 million. Last fall, Trump Indiana, Inc., added a 300-room, $17 million hotel to the site....
Despite the ever-present complaints of some local businesses that the casinos compete with them, Clement sees gaming as a chance to "position Gary as the customer service capital of the entire world"....
The city treasury has definitely benefited from casino revenues. All told, roughly $30 million of the city's $100 million annual budget now comes from casino revenues, according to Gary Mayor Scott King....
The next question is what happens as the market for casino gambling becomes saturated.... Gary officials are concerned about a recent Illinois law that allows riverboats to remain docked rather than having to embark on token "cruises".... A group representing Indiana casino operators has said that it intends to lobby the legislature for a similar liberalization when it convenes in January.... If the legislature goes along, it would tend to confirm those skeptics who have long predicted that state and local restraints on the gaming industry will gradually erode as localities push to maintain their market share.
This material was excerpted from a story in the November 1999 issue of "Planning" magazine. To download the full text, see http://www.planning.org/pubs/nov99.htm
Contact: The story author is Harold Henderson, [email protected]
###
RSS