Philly Casino Watch

For me the establishment of the casinos has been a torturous process. It has been three and a half years since the bill has been passed permitting the operation of slots in the state of Pennsylvania and the largest city in the state has yet to break ground on either the SugarHouse Casino or the Foxwoods Casino.

For those of you who don’t know, the state of Pennsylvania passed a bill back in July of 2004 legalizing the use of slot machine gaming for 14 venues, which at that time had yet to be determined. Since then, a selection process has taken place, awarding licenses to the applicants who best fit the selection criteria. Two of those licenses were given to both the SugarHouse Casino and the Foxwoods Casino by the state and the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. The locations for both casinos were approved for locations along the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The SugarHouse Casino would be located at the north end of the city, while Foxwoods Casino would be located at the south end.

Now, despite having been approved by the state and selected by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, the city of Philadelphia has refused to issue the proper zoning permits to the casinos in response to a vocal minority of local community members opposing the casinos’ establishment. This has led to a multitude of legal battles over who has the right to decide the establishment of the casinos and that is where we are today. It is my belief that the economic and tax revenue implications of slots in Pennsylvania is far too great to ignore. The potential hundreds of millions of dollars per year in tax revenue (the casinos will have a tax rate of 54 percent) would have far reaching effects across the city and state. Furthermore, the city’s riverfront can currently only be described as a primarily tattered industrial wasteland. Anyone denying that is merely delusional. With the exception of the futile efforts to develop Penn’s Landing, which was a modest success at best, the river has remained an absolute waste of a natural resource. Finally, there is an opportunity to change that with the two casinos acting as the catalyst and economic driving force and it would be foolish for the city to turn its back on the opportunity and that’s why I’m PRO-CASINO.

Tags: Pro-Casino

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under General, Pro-Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.