SugarHouse urges delay in license award
Three of the five applicants for the second casino license provided for Philadelphia by Pennsylvania’s gaming law accepted the invitation last week to make 15-minute “closing arguments” for their projects before the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
Representatives of Market8 in the downtown shopping district, Provence in the north Center City district, and Hollywood Casino Philadelphia, one of three project bids for South Philadelphia, made their final presentations before the board. The other two South Philadelphia applicants—the partnership of Greenwood Gaming and Cordish Companies for Philadelphia Live!; and “tomato king” Joseph Procacci’s Casino Revolution—declined the invitation.
Much of the testimony from the three applicants who did appear was in rebuttal to the testimony of the other participant in the hearing, current Philadelphia casino SugarHouse, which has taken the position that a second Philadelphia casino will cannibalize an already-crowded regional casino market. John Donnelly, the casino’s attorney, urged the board to delay granting the second license mandated by the law at least until a legislative panel studying the issue can reach conclusions.
The Pennsylvania General Assembly’s joint Legislative Budget and Finance Committee is charged with studying the “current condition and future viability of gaming” in the state, and some lawmakers want the panel to recommend eliminating the mandate for a second Philadelphia casino, by altering the language in the gaming law that states there “shall be” two casinos in the city.
The panel is slated to return recommendations to the legislature by May 1.
“What I ask you to do is stay your hand,” Donnelly testified before the gaming board. “I ask you to wait, at the bare bones, until the legislature completes its study.”
Karen Bailey of Pennsylvania Gaming Ventures, the company created by Penn National Gaming’s real estate investment trust as the parent of the Hollywood Casino Philadelphia venture, testified that Penn’s national gaming database will overcome any oversaturation concerns.
“The fact that we have the certainty of our financing, the fact that we are the most experienced developer and operator of casinos, the fact that we know this market, the fact that we have a national database that will immediately populate our gaming base here,” are the reasons Bailey testified that Hollywood Casino would be a success for the state.
“It will now be this board’s duty to make a decision,” Gaming Control Board Chairman William Ryan said, closing the hearing, “which we certainly hope to do in the not-too-distant future.”
