TUNICA
RESORTS, Miss. — At the height of a recent dinner hour at Mississippi’s
largest casino, fewer than two dozen patrons were seated in the
buffet’s dining room. A nearby jewelry display sat aglow but bare. The
hallways were mostly empty.
This
is what happens when a casino resort approaches an inglorious end. And
on Monday, Harrah’s Tunica will close, which company officials say will
most likely lead to up to 950 job losses. In Tunica County in the
impoverished Mississippi Delta, it is a disquieting reality that
underlines the deeper threat facing Mississippi and other states with
legalized gambling: There may be too many casinos chasing too few
gambling dollars.
“There’s
gambling everywhere,” said Allen Godfrey, the executive director of the
Mississippi Gaming Commission, which reported that the state’s
nontribal casinos posted $2.1 billion in gross gambling revenues last
year. “If you just want to gamble, you don’t have to go very far to do
it.”
It’s
extraordinarily rare for a major casino to just shut down. But along
with a 2011 flood that closed casinos for weeks and a menu of other
attractions that is insufficient to draw more visitors, the spread of
the legalized gambling that revived this region has also contributed to
its recent decline. “No one knew in 1993 or 1994 what it was going to be
like, and then Mississippi showed the world that it could be a viable
industry,” said Anthony F. Lucas, a professor at the University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, who researches the gambling industry. “And that
encourages everybody else that has a possible way into the gate that
they can compete.”
Casinos,
including Native American tribal properties, now operate in nearly 40
states, providing tax revenue that states have come to depend on.
“I
think governments are generally receptive because, in a way, it’s
almost like a tax, but they don’t get blamed for it,” Dr. Lucas said.
At the same time, though, parts of the country are coping with a potential glut of casinos.
In
New York, State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli cautioned last week that
with casinos confronting new competition, gambling complexes that could
open upstate within a few years may not deliver the economic benefits
some predicted.
Last
month, Missouri’s governor cited a “steep decline” in gambling revenues
when he announced a budget shortfall. And Iowa regulators recently
turned back a plan for a new casino in Cedar Rapids amid worries that it
could destabilize existing properties. Industry experts say Atlantic
City, where casino revenues have fallen partly because of the arrival of
casinos in nearby states, is one of the markets facing an ominous
future. Dr. Lucas said he believed Atlantic City’s “collapse” rivaled
Tunica’s.
For
years, gambling has been a boon for northwest Mississippi. Millions of
people came here to play, transforming this formerly sluggish area into,
for a time, the nation’s third-largest casino market and allowing it to
shove aside decades of squalor. Not even 30 years ago, the notion of a
four-lane highway was whimsical, and an open sewer called Sugar Ditch
flowed through the county seat.
When
casinos began arriving here in 1992, so did an era of low unemployment,
new infrastructure and a sense of economic progress in a place that had
known little of it. This community, long called Robinsonville, even
earned the new, tourist-friendly moniker of Tunica Resorts.
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The
past several years, though, have yielded a pronounced slump. Mr.
Godfrey’s agency said that in April, the 18 casinos in Mississippi River
counties logged less than $80 million in revenue, down from $112.5
million just five years earlier.
To
people here, the reasons for Tunica’s decline are academic. They simply
want to know what will come of a county where — at least for a little
longer — nine casinos sit among cotton fields and offer about 9,600 slot
machines and more than one-third of the state’s blackjack tables.
“It’s
unnerving,” said Sherry Mullins, who worked in the gambling industry
for nearly two decades and now manages a liquor store near the road that
leads to the Harrah’s compound. “I worry about it. It keeps me awake at
night.”
Although
Harrah’s initially said up to 1,300 workers would lose their jobs,
company officials said hundreds had been placed in other positions,
including many at other properties controlled by Caesars Entertainment
Corporation. But for those who will be unemployed on Monday, the end of
Harrah’s has been jarring.
“When
they close the doors on Monday, it’s going to hurt,” said Sabrina
Johnson, who has been earning $13.80 an hour as a cook at the property,
where she has worked for 16 years. “It’s going to sting.” Ms. Johnson,
45, who spoke during a session organized by a labor union that
represents some Harrah’s employees, added, “I know I won’t find a job
that pays me what I am making at Harrah’s, but hopefully I can find
something.”
Others are less optimistic.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Jimmy Adams, 66, who has worked at Harrah’s for 18 years. “Nobody’s going to hire me.”
Mr.
Adams and Ms. Johnson said they were among the workers who did not
expect to receive any severance pay after the casino closes.
R.
Scott Barber, Caesars’ regional president for the mid-South, said the
company had tried for four years to sell the Harrah’s property here and
finally decided to shutter a location that he said had become a drain
because of its heavy operating expenses.
That
overhead, along with the regional decline, the flood and the recession,
created what Mr. Barber described as “the perfect storm” and said it
had forced Caesars to act, even though the company had not sold the
property.
“You
typically divest when you have found a suitable buyer,” Mr. Barber
said. The decision stunned this area, which is dotted with billboards
advertising casinos and has a privately owned vocational school for
aspiring dealers and bartenders.
“I’d
love to be able to sit here and spin that this is something good,” said
Webster Franklin, the president and chief executive officer of the
Tunica Convention & Visitors Bureau. “But this is not good.” There
is wide agreement that, because casinos elsewhere in Mississippi are not
making up the losses suffered here, the consequences of Tunica County’s
decline will reverberate throughout the state, which received a $140
million increase to its general fund in the 2013 fiscal year from
gambling taxes. In addition, counties and municipalities received more
than $89 million in gambling taxes.
But what is less clear is whether or how Mississippi should try to beef up the industry.
Some
members of the Legislature have wondered aloud in recent months whether
the state should offer economic incentives, like tax breaks, to
existing casinos.
But
Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican who will face re-election in 2015, has
said he would resist any such incentives, in a deeply religious state
where gambling, despite its fiscal value, remains a target for
criticism.
Still,
there has been plentiful speculation that a company could soon buy the
vast Harrah’s property. Although Mr. Barber said a sale was not
imminent, Ms. Mullins is among those hoping for a deal.
“It’s
not just the casino,” she said. “It’s the casino. It’s the R.V. park.
It’s the convention center. It’s so much more that we’re losing. It’s
not just another casino shutting down.”
no one is more religious than Andrew Cuomo who by his divine powers and presidential aspirations and invisible ink NY Const Art 1, Sec 3 decrees that there is no one who shall be President before him because he decides the particular calendar day that the Holy Days occur. Believe in Andrew Cuomo or get the hell out of New York State or at least Nassau OTB when Andrew Cuomo tells you to go to Mississippi!
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude
Solnik
(631)
913-4244
Long
Island
Business News
2150
Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI
Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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