The small Washington town of La Center is contemplating the bleak future without the tax revenues from the four card rooms that largely funded its budget over the years—until the arrival of the Indian casino: the Ilani Casino Resort, which killed off one of the card rooms, and left the others struggling.
The Cowlitz tribe’s $510 million Ilani Casino Resort opened in April 2017 on Interstate 5, a short distance from La Center.
Things are so serious that the city government has used the term “doom and gloom” upon more than one occasion during city council meetings and in discussions of the 2018 budget.
Cardrooms in the past funded 70 percent of the budget of the town of less than 3,000 residents in Clark County.
The cardrooms: Last Frontier Casino, Palace Casino, New Phoenix Casino and Chips Casino paid about $3 million each year in the last 15 years, although that amount declined somewhat during the Great Recession.
Chips closed in 2014, so its demise can’t be blamed on the tribal casino, but the New Phoenix, which closed in March of 2017, lost most of its customers and dealers to the Ilani.
John Bockmier, who represents the cardrooms, recently told the city council: “I hope I am completely wrong. I hope people can look back and say, ‘Hey, John, remember when you were completely wrong about the cardrooms hurting?’ I don’t think it’ll work out that way. The signs are there. We have a competitor we can’t compete with and declining sales.”
The city has lately turned its hopes from cardrooms to 152 acres of developable land across the interstate from the casino that it envisions as a commercial center.
Those hopeful of such a development point to the Washington city Camas, which in the 1980s and 90s transitioned from its Georgia-Pacific paper mill, which provided 70 percent of tax revenues—and 3,000 jobs— to an industrial park specializing in tech companies. They had no choice, since the mill closed a large part of its operation. In the two decades since then the city has grown to have vital downtown with 22,000 residents.
La Center’s Mayor Greg Thornton recently addressed the city’s problem head-on, declaring: “The priority for the city is to attract new businesses and development. We need to diversify.”
A newly elected council member, Doug Boff, previously served on the Planning Commission that developed the vision for the 152 acres. He told the Columbian, “In the private sector, a business that has 70 percent of business coming from one customer is not a good business model.”
Boff, who was a manager of a mobile data system manufacturer, has visited several towns on the East coast that were almost destroyed when the factories they relied on closed. “They had ghost towns,” he said. “You look at La Center, as nice as it is, and see 70 percent of revenue coming from one industry, and I can’t help but remember what I saw in Pennsylvania.”
La Center isn’t losing residents—quite the opposite. People are moving in. But that means the city needs revenue for services. It expects to grow from 3,000 residents today to double that in 20 years.
Thornton told the Columbian: “Residential development takes place, and those new homes require city services, and taxes are not sufficient to cover the city’s cost for providing services, maintaining roads and parks.” He added, “It puts more burden on the police department. Rooftops don’t pay for themselves.”
The city annexed the so-called “junction area” in 2011 during the administration of Mayor Jim Irish. The Cowlitz tribe helped pay for a $5 million sewer line to serve the area, and $32 million to upgrade the Interstate junction that will bring traffic to the property. The sewer line will be completed soon.
The city rezoned the junction land to make it both attractive and flexible to developers. Boff says the vision is for office, light industrial, commercial and higher density residential.
Jim Irish observed “The casino going in up there is the stimulus for getting La Center to move forward. It has to. We need to think about the citizens of La Center — not the cardrooms, not the businesses — and what brought them here. That’s what you need to push forward.”
Bockmier told the Columbian he hopes the city and the cardrooms can continue to work to benefit all. “We want La Center to thrive,” he said. “We want them to diversify their revenue sources. The better La Center does, the better for everyone,” he said. He has requested a tax break for the cardrooms to help them transition to lower revenues.
Irish also calls on La Center to work with the tribal casino as neighbors, not adversaries.
