The Bay State will become a den of iniquity if we let casino developers build in “vulnerable” urban areas near where lots of poor people live – or so the limousine liberals would have us believe.
Well, it’s time to dump this hackneyed, patronizing and hypocritical argument into the circular file where it belongs. Massachusetts could very well wind up with a pair of urban casinos. And our state is likely to be much better off for it, especially when it comes down to jobs and economic development.
The state’s budding effort to license a trio of casinos has the potential to rev the economic engines of cities and communities that wind up with one of these mega projects. And what better places to put two projects that could create thousands of new jobs than in hard-hit Springfield – or for that matter, in hardscrabble East Boston, just across the line from Revere?
Misguided Arguments
Gov. Deval Patrick has long hinted that the Foxwoods model of a big resort casino out in the middle of nowhere might work best for Massachusetts. No matter that Foxwoods is now tottering under a couple billion dollars in debt, and according to none other than The New York Times, is battling for its very life.
But apparently the theory is that by putting a casino out in the ’burbs or some remote rural town, we will protect the urban poor and elderly from themselves. Patrick hasn’t been this explicit, but many other lawmakers and local religious leaders certainly have.
But guess what? It’s an old and worn-out argument that goes back to at least the 19th century, if not beyond. Comfortable, Victorian, middle-class housewives and professionals crusaded for a century against the supposedly loose morals of the urban working class, battling to shut down taverns and saloons.
After all, all those factory workers certainly couldn’t afford to be blowing money on booze when they had families to support, right?
The moral argument against urban casinos, when put in context, just looks like a modern example of those at the top of the economic ladder preaching down at the bottom. It’s something to think about the next time some anti-gambling group or church leader warns we could end up with low-wage workers and grey-haired grandmas on social security blowing their money on slot machines.
And if there is really no moral reason to put casinos in the suburbs instead of the cities, there is even less of an economic rationale for it.
Suburbs, Sub-Standard
When Steve Wynn came along with plans to challenge Suffolk Downs for the Boston-area license with a proposal for a $1 billion casino in Foxborough, you could almost hear cheering from all the urban casino naysayers.
But Wynn’s gambit to build a casino on Bob Kraft’s land across from Gillette Stadium was hopelessly flawed from the start. Wynn and Kraft totally miscalculated the depth of opposition to their proposal, as well as the many roadblocks a relatively sophisticated suburb could use to derail an unpopular project.
But it’s not just a quirky Foxborough issue. You are never going to get relatively well-off Boston suburbs to agree to be the launching pad for the commonwealth’s casino industry. Period.
And that’s in larger part because the suburbs are the wrong place to put such a project.
Foxborough and the other suburbs around Boston don’t need yet another mall, albeit one with slot machines and maybe a few glitzy restaurants and clubs thrown in. Nor do their relatively well-paid white collar and skilled blue-collar residents need the jobs, with the unemployment rate in Boston’s suburbs far below the national average.
That means a suburban casino will have to tap into urban labor markets, from Worcester to Boston, to fill its ranks. And even that may not work – once the cost of gas is included, it may simply make no sense for someone in East Boston to drive out to Foxborough or some other distant suburb each day for a casino job that may only pay $15 an hour.
Casino Catalysts
Beacon Hill and Patrick envisioned 2011’s landmark casino law as a jobs and economic development stimulus program.
And if that’s still the point, it’s hard not come to the conclusion the Bay State’s cities – and not its affluent suburbs – are the right place for our new casinos.
It’s hard to see how MGM’s $800 million casino plan couldn’t but help revive the fortunes of struggling Springfield, especially its poverty-stricken South End, still battling to recover from last year’s devastating tornado.
The $1 billion casino Suffolk Downs has proposed could provide a major boost to scrappy East Boston, long cutoff from the rest of Boston by geography.
Moreover, both casinos would be in central locales. Simply put, that means job opportunities to a much wider range of low-income and blue-collar workers than a suburban or even small-town location could ever provide.
And with Suffolk and a host of casino developers in Springfield in the lead so far in the battle for two of the state’s three casino licenses, urban casinos may very well win the day. But with the first casino not likely to open before 2015, there is still a lot of competition and debate ahead.
And those old stereotypes about urban living could still win out, if we let them.
