Rivals renew calls to cancel second Philadelphia license
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, pressured by Philadelphia city officials to end two years of speculation, announced that the second casino license for the city will be awarded at a public meeting tomorrow at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
Meanwhile, officials of other Philadelphia-area casinos renewed calls to delay awarding the second city license indefinitely, saying market saturation in the region will result in another casino doing the industry more harm than good.
The board will pick one of four remaining applicants for the second Philadelphia license. Since the plans were first submitted at the end of 2012, two other applicants—Wynn Resorts and Penn National Gaming—pulled out of the competition.
The remaining applicants are:
• Market8, a project of developer Ken Goldenberg slated for a vacant lot that was once occupied by Gimbels department store in the retail district at 8th and Market streets;
• The Provence, proposed by developer Bart Blatstein in a four-block area on the northern end of the Center City district, centered around the iconic clock-tower building that was once the headquarters of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News newspapers (with the casino in the former newsroom);
• Casino Revolution, a project of local produce magnate produce magnate Joseph G. Procacci (known as the “Tomato King”), at Front Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia, near the sports stadium complex; and,
• Live! Hotel & Casino, a joint project of Baltimore-based Cordish Companies and Greenwood Gaming, owner of Parx, the Bensalem casino that is Pennsylvania’s highest-grossing gaming hall, also near the stadium complex in South Philadelphia.
A report last week in the Philadelphia Inquirer cited two unnamed sources with political connections in the state as saying the license is going to Live!, the Cordish-Greenwood project. The report said neither source would go on record.
Live! would be a $425 million casino with 2,000 slot machines and 125 table games at the site of a Holiday Inn near the complex that includes the Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, the Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park and the NHL Flyers’ Wells Fargo Center.
The newspaper cited former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell as having “heard the same talk” about the license going to Live!, but he called on the board to wait on the decision, at least until consulting the governor-elect, Tom Wolf, who defeated incumbent Republican Tom Corbett in the recent election.
“At this point, they shouldn’t do anything until they get the thoughts of Governor-elect Wolf,” Rendell told the newspaper. “I’m not so sure we should have an additional casino in Philadelphia, and that’s not my decision. But the new governor should get some input.”
Rendell was not the only one with misgivings about a second casino. Officials of two other Philadelphia-area casinos, SugarHouse in the city and Harrah’s Philadelphia in nearby Chester, renewed calls to delay a second casino because of market saturation in the region.
“There is no fact, not a single fact, that supports that this city or this region needs another casino,” SugarHouse General Manager Wendy Hamilton told the Inquirer, noting that a decision from the board at this point would be based on “stale information” that does not take into account the flat results of the past year.
Hamilton said a new Philadelphia casino is likely to cannibalize the other casinos in the metropolitan area, which include SugarHouse, Parx, Harrah’s Philadelphia in Chester, Valley Forge casino in King of Prussia, and Delaware Park in Wilmington, Delaware.
“If this second license is issued, it’s bad for everybody,” Hamilton said in a separate interview with the Cherry Hill Courier Post. “It’s bad for us, it’s bad for our vendors, it’s bad for our employees and it’s bad for most of our competitors. We are operating in a difficult environment. The thought of adding another mouth at the table is very, very scary.”
In a filing the day before the board’s announcement, SugarHouse asked the Gaming Control Board to reopen the record to consider “post-December 2013 information, data, statistics, commentary, argument, and other evidence.” The board’s file on the second Philadelphia license was officially closed last February.
Ron Baumann, general manager of Harrah’s Philadelphia, joined the chorus calling for delay of the second casino license, commenting in a statement that another city casino “simply doesn’t make sense.”
Gaming board spokesman Doug Harbach, meanwhile, denied the rumors that Live! had an inside track to the license. “The decision will be made in a public vote,” he told the Inquirer. “No parties have any knowledge of the outcome at this point.”
For the licensing decision to be final, the state’s gaming law requires that the board’s four legislative appointees agree on a choice and that at least one of the three gubernatorial appointees must join them.
Harbach added that the recent saturation of the Northeast gaming market—including the closure of four Atlantic City casinos with a possible fifth pending—does not necessarily mean a second Philadelphia casino will cannibalize the current market.
He noted that the board’s decision will likely be challenged in court by losing bidders (as all the other decisions have been), and then, after the decision is confirmed by the state Supreme Court, it will take at least 18 month for the winner to build the casino. “We’re always trying to guess what the market is going to be two years out, 2 1/2 years out,” he said.
