The Bay State is about to put to the test an increasingly shaky economic development theory, that Las Vegas-style gambling can decisively revive the fortunes of struggling, post-industrial cities.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has yet to reveal the winning bidders for the state’s three casino licenses.
But every proposal still left in the mix features a massive casino development in the Downtown of a hard-hit mill town or once-proud factory city.
We are talking Everett, Springfield, Fall River, New Bedford and Revere.
Yet there are big problems with this idea. I called it “shaky” because this is a strategy that is yielding decidedly mixed to downright abysmal results in other cities across the country, with downtown casinos typically great on paper only to fizzle after the doors open.
Theory And Reality
There is a growing list of major American cities that have turned to casino developments in hopes of sparking a renaissance in their dying downtowns.
New Orleans had a casino long before Katrina and it was one of the few things quickly rebuilt after the storm, though it would be hard to argue the Big Easy is booming these days.
Detroit has three casinos of its own, but that didn’t stop the Motor City from sliding into bankruptcy, with an influx of corporate headquarters a more promising development for the city’s long-term hopes.
Downtown St. Louis has yet to become a tourist mecca, seven years after the opening of $507 million Lumiere Place, while in Philadelphia, hopes are that a second casino will generate a downtown revival after the first one proved a dud.
Ohio is so far the most ambitious test yet of this idea. With the state’s four casinos barely two years old, the jury is still out, but Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo and Columbus are hardly grabbing headlines as boomtowns.
Worse though, downtown casinos also appear to fall flat in the one area that all gambling palaces large and small are supposed to excel at: Reeling in the revenue.
St. Louis’s downtown casino has been getting its head handed to it by a suburban competitor, while SugarHouse, Philly’s first casino, has been left in the dust by a slot- and table-packed racetrack outside the city.
Ohio may prove to be the biggest flop, with the state’s four downtown casinos now getting outhustled by racetrack slot machines, despite having all the bells and whistles, from fancy hotels and restaurants to table games.
The Massachusetts Experiment
Now here’s Massachusetts, ready to license what will inevitably be three urban casinos, and, as always, oblivious to what’s happening in the rest of the world in the hinterlands regions beyond I-495.
Our old mill towns and industrial cities are being courted by glitzy gambling moguls touting mega gambling and entertainment projects, ranging from MGM’s $800 million to remake downtown Springfield to Steve Wynn’s astounding $1.6 billion for a gambling palace along the murky Mystic River in Everett.
And that’s not all. Let’s not forget there’s also a slot parlor license featuring a battle between Leominster, Plainville, and Raynham and, of course, the Mashpee Wampanoags, seeking federal approval to turn Taunton into a gambling Taj Mahal.
To be fair, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission wound up with an all-urban slate of casino proposals more by happenstance than by design.
Casino tycoons tried to win permission to build in various suburbs, but they were invariably found run out of town, often long before any formal referendum.
I give the MGM plan in Springfield the best shot at helping revive a city trying to lift itself up after decades of hard luck, including a devastating tornado a few years ago.
Frankly, no one else right now is going to come and invest hundreds of millions in downtown Springfield, and, to make the numbers work, MGM is going to have to attract gamblers from well beyond the city’s poverty-stricken precincts.
Everett and Revere, where Wynn and Mohegan Sun have respectively staked out their casino proposals as they battle it out for the Boston-area license, are a different matter.
Boston, which borders both cities, is the 800-pound gorilla here, the hub for the region’s tourist trade, its universities and business community, its hotels and restaurants, you name it.
Casinos in neighboring Everett and Revere will attract gamblers looking to play the slots and tables, but it’s hard to see either city becoming a wider draw that would lure tourists away from Boston.
I could be wrong, but common sense tells me otherwise.
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
