Penn National Gaming’s plan to open a mini-casino in Morgantown, next to a Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange, is running into local opposition from the religious communities that are near the site of the proposed satellite casino.
The mini-casino site sits on the edge of Pennsylvania’s Amish country, a politically conservative region that was well-represented at the recent public hearing on the satellite casino, showing up with a petition signed by more than 1,000 local residents in opposition to the project.
Both sides piped up again last week in interviews for an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer that explored the depth of opposition to the mini-casino “In every way, it’s incongruent with this community,” commented former state Rep. Sam Rohrer, president of the American Pastors Network. “This is not a community, like Las Vegas, where ‘what happens here, stays here,’” added the Rev. Coleen Brandt Painter, pastor of the Elverson United Methodist Church, which helped organize the petition drive against the casino. “This is a community where everybody knows your name, and your business, and we like it that way.”
Allen Styer III, chairman of the board of supervisors for Caernarvon Township—and a staunch supporter of the casino and its potential benefits to the township, where Morgantown is located—called out the casino opponents for claims they made at the public hearing, predicting that the mini-casino would bring crime, sex trafficking and all manner of ills to the community.
“The kind of stuff they were bringing up is crazy,” Styer told the Inquirer. “I don’t foresee any additional human trafficking or murder-for-hire in our town” as a result of the mini-casino. “It was really a no-brainer if you’re looking out for what’s the best interests of the community, based on facts,” he added of the mini-casino project, which is estimated will give the township $1.6 million in new annual tax revenue.
There are five mini-casinos planned in Pennsylvania under the 2017 gaming expansion law, which, ironically, was opposed by Penn National due to the mini-casino provision, which, it claimed, unfairly open the isolated flagship Hollywood Casino at Penn National Race Course outside of Harrisburg to competition other properties did not face.
Penn’s choices for its satellite facilities—which max out at 750 slots and 40 tables—have been largely defensive, beginning with the first license issued, for which Penn paid $50 million and located in York to guard from competition to Hollywood Casino.
