N.Y. struggles continue; Sweet deal for Mount Airy

For Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady, the good news is that it’s turned a derelict locomotive plant into a shiny, new, $330 million gambling hall and that it’s spurred development of the nearby Mohawk Harbor residential community. The bad news is, well, where to begin? Area merchants aren’t seeing any uptick in business, drunk-driving arrests are up a bit and casino grosses are a shadow of what Rush Street Gaming projected. Last month, Rivers made $11 million — the same amount that it did in three weeks in February, as the aggregate gross creeps past the $100 million mark. (Rivers’ own year-one projections were for $181 million to $222 million.)

This embarrassment highlights what City Councilman Vince Raggi calls “the big elephant in the room,” tax payments that are falling short of even conservative budget numbers. “I hope we’re going to make that,” Raggi says, while Council President Leesa Perazzo  handwaves him with “any new property is just that, new. It’s not even a year old. It’s going to take a while for it to hit its full stride. So far I’ve been very happy with what I’m seeing.” Yes, but Rivers is coming up painfully short of what it promised it would do. When pitching casinos to new jurisdictions, developers have got to stop drinking their own bathwater, especially when entering a market as saturated as New York State is.

* If you find Pennsylvania‘s new satellite casino law confusing, you’re not alone. Lawmakers are griping after the fact about a 28-word sweetheart provision inserted to specifically benefit Mount Airy Casino. State Rep. Maureen Madden (D) was unrepentant about the special treatment for one casino. “To protect all that Mount Airy has committed to in Monroe County, we need to make sure it thrives. I understand that there are always winners and losers in every piece of legislation.”

Rep. Mark Rozzi (D) fires back that a Penn National Gaming lawsuit over the matter is almost inevitable, throwing the satellite-casino process into stasis, along with millions in projected revenue. (Penn is “researching its legal options” — I’ll bet!) Ex-owner Louis DeNaples‘ “juice” with Republican lawmakers is credited for the special treatment accorded Mount Airy. Throw in Mount Airy’s battle against the flat-fee payments mandated to host communities and the little casinos is throwing a lot of spanners into the legislative works.

* A few movers and shakers in Mississippi are starting to make sense with regards to the folly of forcing casinos to sit along the Big Muddy, vulnerable to floods and other acts of God. Since 2014 gaming revenue is down 8% in Tunica and an industry that once generated 14,000 jobs employs 5,037. Revenue peaked at $1.7 billion in 2005 and hasn’t come close lately. “Today, every American is in a two-and-a-half-hour drive to a casino,” gripes Tunica Convention & Visitors Bureau President Webster Franklin. “If we could let the existing properties reinvest on land here in Tunica County and make this a more modern-day casino strip, I think we’d be more competitive in the long term.”

That’ll be a tough sell in the Bayou State, where Bible Belters cling to the hypocrisy of abjuring gambling but daintily taking its tax revenues … so long as the fiction is maintained that casinos don’t sit in the state but on “riverboats” (actually buildings in moats). However, we wish Franklin luck. Besides, the dangers of riverboat casinos were cruelly exposed in Hurricane Katrina, a lesson that is taking a long time to take hold in the state house.

* What is Superman doing at a Macao roulette wheel? Only cartoonish Jacky Tsai knows for sure.