It’s death-grapple time in Philadelphia, where five competing proposals will be aired for the final time before the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Even a supporter of casino expansion in the city, like Jeffries LLC‘s John Maxwell, concedes there will be dilution of the market. “Obviously the existing guys will not be as profitable as they are now, but we still think they will be quite profitable.” With support like that, who needs opposition?
Centrally located and currently nothing more than a parking lot, Ken Goldenberg‘s $500 million Market8 has emerged as the favorite. Unfortunate 
proximity to schools and houses of worship appears to have made Bart Blatstein‘s (left) $700 million The Provence almost as much an outside contender as Joseph “Tomato King” Procacci‘s $428 million Casino Revolution. Well outside of downtown — and possibly way out of contention for that reason — are the Hollywood Philadelphia casino being pushed by Penn National Gaming and the Philadelphia Live! one backed both by Penn nemesis Cordish Cos. and Greenwood Racing. If the contest were decided on who makes the best copy, the colorful Tomato King would surely win. However, inexperience and a far-from-central location could squash his chances like an overripe tomato.
“A grand social experiment” is what The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas is calling Rose. Rabbit. Lie, making it sound like something that just came off Capitol Hill. Since I still haven’t seen it, all I can say is that it’s very outside the box and has a strong ‘design your own experience’ vibe. As Mike Weatherford says, “You’re paying for the atmosphere.” His passing remark, “The good news-bad news is that The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas has created something different, to the point that it doesn’t seem to have it all sorted out yet” would serve as a metaphor for the still-evolving Cosmo itself.
A bidder for a Catskills casino has emerged from left field — or Alabama as it’s otherwise known. A forcibly shuttered e-bingo parlor, Greenetrack, wants in on some New York State action. President Luther “Nat” Winn Jr. has ties to the old Castkills resort industry, to the civil rights movement of the Sixties — and to Rev. Al Sharpton. One of the latter’s cronies has been tapped to lobby for Greenetrack. “For his part, Sharpton claimed he was not playing holy roller for a casino,” writes the New York Post, quoting Sharpton as professing ignorance of the project.
Having let the casino cat out of the bag, Penn National Gaming and Churchill Downs find that everyone wants a piece of the action in Maine: the Passamoquoddy Tribe, a wannabe racino and would-be slot route operators. Who can blame them, seeing the success of gambling in Maine? Unfortunately, a commission meant to sort out the alternatives closed up shop without taking any action, dumping the whole problem in the Legislature’s lap.
The process was not without its moments of irony: “John Osborne, general manager of Hollywood Casino, told the Veterans & Legal Affairs Committee that new slot machines throughout Maine would ‘cannibalize’ his business and argued that adding casinos must be based on sound economic data.” Like Penn has ever worried about cannibalization or “sound economic data when pitching a new casino of its own somewhere or other. At the moment, only slot routes have legislative momentum, although Scarborough Downs (above) is making a last-ditch appeal for racino status.
Best bets: Some of the strongest action can be found in unsurprisingly obscure casinos. USA Today, with help from our Anthony Curtis, breaks it down.
