The Table Games Are Here: Rendell to Sign Bill Allowing Poker and Blackjack (and Craps, Baccarat and Roulette) Tables To Settle Last Year’s Budget Woes.
The “free” bus to Atlantic City may have been discontinued, but don’t despair; the New Atlantic City may just be popping up in our backyard. On Tuesday night in Harrisburg, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, the House voted 103-89 in favor of allowing up to 250 table games at large casinos. Rendell is supposedly going to sign the bill into legislation as soon as Thursday, in an attempt to recoup losses from last year’s budget crisis. Table games will be taxed at 16 percent of gross revenue, with 2 percentage points going to local counties and municipalities (like Northern Liberties in SugarHouse’s case). Not only will more money be going to the city (slots are the #1 source of a typical casino’s revenue, but table gaming attracts “bigger spenders”) this move will undoubtedly lead to job creation. However, some opponents have swung in the other direction, suggesting that the casinos will bring on/encourage an influx of gaming addicts and prostitutes.
Supposedly on Monday, Rendell openly threatened 1,000 state furloughs if the bill wasn’t on his desk by the end of this week. The house jumped. Northern Liberties: welcome your new visitors from New Jersey.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Great news. Now we can look forward to high-class casinos teeming with James Bond-style intrigue, rather than fleabag slots parlors preying on the elderly and indigent. Right?
“More money to the city…undoubtedly leading to job creation.” Man, Philebrity humor’s gets even drier when Joey’s away.
(By the way, NLNA sent out word this morning that tax money going directly to affected neighborhoods is NOT going to happen. Not sure if your source is better than theirs.)
January 7th, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Whoa, slow down there guest editor. 2 percentage points may be going to “local counties and municipalities,” but much of that money has been directed to legislators’ pet projects by the bill, not the local governments or neighborhood groups. Here in Philadelphia, the Convention Center and possibly the school district get the cash, not Northern Liberties as you state.
And given that the SugarHouse’s location will attract way more Philadelphian money than out-of-town money, it is far from “undoubtable” that jobs will be “created.” More like jobs will be moved, as in from the closed local businesses where casino-goers used to spend their discretionary income to the casino.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
great photo though!
January 7th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the imput, you’re both right, money is not going to the neighborhoods. I’m not sure which side of the buttered bread I fall on…
January 7th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
What local businesses are going to be affected by the casino? How many of your friends are going to stop eating at Standard Tap so they can eat at the casino’s buffet? How many people are going to stop going to Johnny Brendas so they can order $8 martinis at the casino bar? I’d really like to know what local businesses are going to suffer because of a casino. I can honestly state that of the people I know in this city, I cannot think of a single one whose discretionary spending habits are going to be affected by this casino. There are a number of salient arguments against having a casino, but “killing local jobs” strikes me as little more than a scare tactic.
January 7th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Geez, could I have used the word “casino” more in that past paragraph? I need to reacquaint myself with pronouns.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
@ Johnny
Most people I know that lose $200 shooting craps on a Friday night will not be going to any bar, any show or any sports games on Saturday night.
January 7th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
@ Johnny
You’re right in that the folks hanging at JB’s or Standard Tap aren’t likely to move their spending to the casino. But you can imagine that some of the old heads who usually hang out at their local watering holes in Mayfair or Bridesburg, or some of the folks who eat out at Tacconelli’s or the original Chickie&Pete’s once in a while, or some of the patrons of entertainment like Club Oz or Dave&Busters or North Philly boxing matches, or even some of the young heads who go drinking on South Street or Old City on weekends will now opt to spend their money at the casinos, especially when there is free parking, free entertainment, free buffets, free alchohol, no last call, and no smoking ban.
Oh, and it all centers around an activity that is highly addictive, at least to a certain portion of the population. (No sweat – for those who get in over their heads, the casinos can extend credit to keep them playing.)
Basically, unless the casino-goers are from out of town/state, casinos will only vaccumm money (and thus jobs) out of the city, not the other way round. Which is why every other city with casinos has them as stand alone tourist resorts, or downtown near their convention centers, hotels, and tourist destinations. We’ll be the first to experiment with neighborhood casinos that prey on neighborhood money.
January 8th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
First off, let me say that I am playing devil’s advocate here, b/c I have very mixed feelings about this. I hate casinos personally (If there is an activity less stimulating than playing the slots, I’d love to know what it is), but I also think people have a right to make their own choices, good or bad. In the spirit of debate, let me counter: First off, I find your argument that it takes money away from Dave and Buster’s to be laughable. The city will see way more money from a casino in which people pour their money into a machine than they do from Dave and Buster’s where people pour their money into a machine. Furthermore, I thought your point was that this would hurt LOCAL business. D & B’s is headquartered in, of all places, Dallas. I’d love to see the casino throw them out of business.
The bottom line is that this is business. Should the sandwich shop guy complain when a bar goes in down the street? After all, beer has addictive properties, and the neighborhood’s discretionary funds could go to that instead of sandwiches. Business usually operates as a two way street. Yes, the casino will perhaps siphon money from nearby businesses, but it will also bring people into the city who wouldn’t ordinarily be here, just like the bar in the above scenario would bring people in the neighborhood who otherwise would never have walked by the sandwich shop. I think this especially holds true if they add blackjack and poker. Whereas slots only was merely going to bring people from nearby nursing homes, blackjack and poker will bring people who actually want to spend money.
That all being said, I don’t think gambling is really going to solve a whole lot of problems, as it seems to be rather unpopular right now. Atlantic City is on the verge of becoming the East Coast Detroit, and some of the Native American Casinos are in big financial trouble. Cities that have added casinos have not gotten the big bump they expected. When the recession hits, gambling is the first thing to go, before sports events, drinking, or dining. This seems like an odd time to bring in something that I really think could fail miserably. I don’t think the argument against casinos is that it’s going to take away a bunch of other jobs and hurt other businesses, neither of which I think is true. And I think your argument that “my friends won’t play, but those blue collar folks in the Northeast will” is a little bit patronizing. But there is an argument against bringing in a casino, and that’s that it could very well be a colossal failure.
January 8th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
JG, its good to be devil’s advocate – helps everyone refine their arguments. And I definitely agree with you about casinos being failures during bad economic times, and the stupidity of our state investing in such an unstable industry.
But i can’t agree with you that this is just another business, like someone opening a bar or restaurant. PA’s casinos are given existance by the state, located to avoid competetion (cant be within I believe 12 miles of another casino), with only two (for now at least) allowed in city limits so as to have a near monopoly. Unlike other establishments, they are exempt from liquor and smoking controls, as well as local zoning and design reviews. And they are taxed completely differently, with so much potential revenue going to the state that our govt will do things like speed up the reconstruction of Girard Avenue interchange to help the casinos. Few other businesses operate with these advantages.
And gambling studies find that about half the revenue comes from the 10% or so of addicted gamblers. The industry (and now our state) must continually create problem gamblers just to survive – it is their essential business model, predatory by nature, thoroughly engineered for a single goal: getting people to spend more and more of their money. And problem gamblers come with a whole host of problems that affect the wider population – bancruptcy, absenteeism, divorce, spouse and child abuse, etc. I don’t think its appropriate public policy to base our public revenues on this kind of industry.
But back to the economics. I hope you are right and that the Philly casinos can attract a huge number of non-Philadelphians and non-Pennsylvanians (since the state takes the big cut). But given an already saturated market in the suburbs – one in Bensalem, one in Chester, one coming to Valley Forge – our only hope in making new money (as opposed to simply moving it around within Philly, while siphoning off most of it for the state and casino investors), comes from New Jerseyites and tourists/conventioners.
Will the Jerseyites venture across the bridge into the dirty city and sit through Delaware Ave traffic to get to Foxwoods? Will conventioners take the El and walk down gritty Frankford Ave to Sugarhouse? I don’t know.
Which is why I almost could have agreed with putting casinos in Philly if they had been placed at the convention center or the airport. Even Independence Visitor Center makes more sense economically than the waterfront locations.