Richmond, Virginia leaders recently announced the city will move forward with Urban One’s proposal for a $600 million casino on Walmsley Boulevard. Richmond voters will have the final say on the facility with a referendum on the November ballot.
Dr. Robert McNab, an economics professor at Old Dominion University in Norfolk pointed out the casino will bring positives and negatives to the city. “People tend to overpromise with casinos, because they look at Las Vegas, and they pick out the success stories and say it will look like that. They tend not to look at the failures.”
For example, McNab said research indicates most of the spending in casinos is done by locals. “If you have people who used to be spending on movie theaters, bars and restaurants and are just shifting that spending to casinos, the economic impact is very small,” he said.
Another issue is casino gambling, like lottery sales, typically attracts people with lower incomes. “We don’t want to essentially be taxing the poor at a higher rate for entertainment,” McNab said.
He added that governments should not necessarily rely on casino revenue.
“Much like a person can get addicted to gambling revenues, a government can get addicted to gambling revenues. When the economy’s doing well, casinos make a lot of money, so governments may have a tendency to take money from elsewhere or lower taxes. But when times get rough, we see, much like tourism and hospitality during the Covid-19 pandemic, casino and other forms of gambling revenues can take a sharp downturn,” he said.
On the upside, McNab said since a casino’s location is a key to its success, Richmond’s central location can attract visitors from across Virginia and other states.
Richmond Realtors Association Chief Executive Officer Laura Lafayette agreed and added the casino is “bringing jobs to an area that has not seen those kind of good paying job. This creates an opportunity to have economic development further down the corridor.”
Lafayette said the casino offers far more positive benefits than negative impacts. She said, “I would expect it to attract a number of restaurants, perhaps some retail that you typically see in tourist areas.” She added, “We would love to see folks have jobs and enable them to purchase homes if that’s what they want to do. And we would love for some of those tourists and visitors to eventually join us as residents.”
