Sugarhouse To Break Ground Next Week; Cops, News Orgs Smell Delicious Blood
With news breaking that Sugarhouse, after literally years of protest, class warfare and God only knows what kind of backroom dealing, is slated to break ground on October 8th, here comes the part where it all starts to get ugly. Really ugly. This morning, a dozen protestors were arrested after blocking the gates at the Sugarhouse site, and check the Fox29 video at right to chuckle at the cop who’s all like “We had some good intelligence [that protestors would be there].” (No shit, Sherlock: You got an Internet. Also: Having this news broken to you by Jennaphr Frederick and Steve Keeley just makes it all feel so much more base, so undignified, so… paid for.) Because here is the thing: The casinos are real now. At least this one, anyway. With a groundbreaking date finally on the books, Sugarhouse is rolling in, and now, everybody else has to roll over. Because it’s all legal now. It’s all above board. And our worst fears have come true: It’s going to be ugly. The Community Benefits Agreement hoisted on the outlying neighborhoods is basically a joke. And as valiant as their efforts have been in some ways, the anti-casino movement in Philadelphia has failed. Maybe it got started too late. Maybe it couldn’t get its message across properly to the working class and working poor nearby that the casinos won’t be good for them, that in fact, it’s only going to make everything worse. Maybe it’s because this is what you get when you employ professional activists, and not generations-deep natives to lead an effort like this. Maybe it’s all of these things and other things we can’t know yet. Bottom line? Fishtown, you’re fucked. Sorry.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
the unofficial groundbreaking was last week. Keeley was there saying “FINALLY!”.
September 29th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Or maybe people have learned to distrust rhetoric like “Fishtown, you’re fucked” and “our worst fears have come true” and “it’s only going to make everything worse.”
And it’s not like anyone has any better ideas for the Delaware River. People should be kicking themselves for rejecting the Port Richmond LNG terminal.
September 29th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Or the State of Pennsylvania has now received $1 billion in casino revenues that has gone directly towards property tax relief and damnit if we can’t use some additional revenue right now!
September 29th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I love the designs I saw for the public park running along the Delaware with running trails, and hope that these slot parlors won’t permanently thwart the entire concept.
I’m disappointed that the slot parlors won the contest, but I’m really disappointed that no private financiers in the greater Metro Philadelphia Area couldn’t find a benefit to investing the dollars on that waterfront. Seems like such a viable location for coordinated development. Maybe it will still happen.
September 29th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Hate to rain on the pity party, but folks there ain’t a casino there yet! This town’s got tons of examples of bad projects breaking ground in this town only to crash and burn in the end (here’s to you, DisneyHole and PennsLanding Gondola).
There’s lots more protests to come, lots of blocking of Delaware Ave traffic, and other assorted fun – and that’s just the construction phase. If it manages to open, I imagine there’ll be more blockages, sit-ins, artful pranks, and other protests. Fundamentally, the economics are bad for a casino at this site (which is why Sugarhouse has to spread the risk among TWENTY different lenders), so it prolly won’t take much to shut them down even after they’re open…
September 30th, 2009 at 10:54 am
There are no casino revenues yet. There are projected revenues written into the state and city budgets. As far as I know, the only casino revenues have been in the pockets of state politicians, most notably our homeboy Fast Eddie.
There are local investors in on this project. This is their vision of the Delaware waterfront, I guess.
Maybe the activists could have done a better job, but the state set up a special legal structure for handling the casinos that usurped control from the city, making this pretty hard to avoid from a legal standpoint. So civil disobedience is the only options at this point.
If you want a nice waterfront, check out the Schuylkill; it’s pretty sweet.
September 30th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I really don’t care enough about the citizens of philadelphia and the effect a casino will have upon them to ever line up and get arrested for those..who..in turn don’t give a shit about you or me.
September 30th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
To Grapesoda, what does it matter where they’re from? If someone doesn’t give a shit about you then they don’t give a shit about you. I’m sure anywhere else 99.999% of the people would care just as less as they do here.