Penn National Gaming got a little something extra when it bought an old General Motors site for its Columbus, Ohio casino: 81 sites’ worth of toxic waste, so much sludge it takes 3,000 pages to catalog. Penn didn’t have to — pardon the pun — come clean about this, but it did.
Now Penn faces the not-inconsiderable task of remediating the cesspools it has inherited. Were I a prospective customer, I’d hope Penn doesn’t take the shortcut of simply pouring a concrete or clay seal over the sludge. How’d you like to know that stuff was X dozen feet below your slot stool?
Ohio voters who approved the state’s four in-progress casinos also carved a protected duopoly into stone. Not only does Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert have half the casino action, he’s gotten into bed with Harrah’s Entertainment (which may, in turn, operate Gilbert’s casinos) for a piece of its racetrack business. Perhaps the best remedy for this incestuous setup would be for voters to widen competition by approving seven racinos. But that’s off the 2010 ballot now and the ball’s in Gov. Ted Strickland‘s court, where it’s likely to rest awhile.
Wake me when lawmakers in Massachusetts finally decide whether or not to approve casinos. It already looks as though the state will reap hundreds of millions less in licensing fees than it would had it acted just one Legislature sooner. And now the Mashpee Wampanaogs may be able to make a federal end run around the deadlock in the capitol.
Video-upload problems have prevented S&G from sharing the Quicktime teasers for what Daily Fiasco calls “maybe the most batshit insane show ever loosed on the Strip” since Raw Talent Live. The latter was the gleefully incoherent brainchild of Europoseur N(icole) D(urr), centering upon the “Laptop of Life” (LOL, geddit?) and the only show I have ever seen that used prerecorded applause — which made the nearly empty Sahara showroom sound as though it were filled with delighted but invisible people.
Entitled Triumph (the title alone tempts fate), the new Las Vegas Hilton spectacle appears to be a mishmash of garbled Arthurian mythology with 19th scientific experimentation. Sort of like somebody took the mostly craptastic final two seasons of Stargate SG-1 and topped them off with story elements swiped from Amanda Tapping‘s current series, Sanctuary. If they throw in a cheesily animated dragon, the SyFy Channel homage will be complete. Daily Fiasco has the full four-teaser sequence. Enjoy … if you dare.
Unscreened hedge funds have been cleared to take over Greektown Casino. Hedge funds? What could go wrong?
In the past 24 hours, financially ailing nightclub Rumjungle has been both evicted from Mandalay Bay and had its execution stayed by a local judge. However this soap opera ends, you have to hand it to Rumjungle for a novel legal argument: then-MGM Mirage failed to protect the club from competition. Dastardly!
From the article: “Though tests found arsenic, barium, cadmium and mercury in the sludge, a 1981 GM report concluded that the compounds didn’t pose a threat to drinking water or streams. GM persuaded the U.S. EPA to declare the sludge nonhazardous in 1987.”
– If Sharron Angle has her way, this will never happen again! There won’t be an EPA for GM (or BP, or anybody else) to lie to.
The Greektown link didn’t work for me, but I found this one:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100629/BIZ/6290335/1001/biz
– “The new owners include 10 hedge funds and mutual funds that have been granted an “institutional exemption” from the formal licensing application because there are too many partners to approve individually.” Maybe the Mob should have tried that tactic with the Nevada gaming control board, listing all the “Families” as investors. 😉
Being born and raised in good ole Massachusetts, it’s NIMBY in full force. Even (former) South Weymouth Naval Airbase has been proposed for a casino. But the surrounding towns of Weymouth, Hingham and Rockland oppose being the main access to/from the property even though Route 3 runs through (a portion) of all three towns.
Farm land in Middleboro was also brought up, but the roads in (most of) Mass are only two lanes. (One going, the other returning.) Also, becasue of this, Gridlock is a norm there already. Try convincing the locals to agree to wider roads running by their farms.)
Oh! I almost forgot. The Mass “Blue Laws.” You can’t purchase (packaged) alcohol on Sundays! And, you used to NOT be able to have a (retail) store open on Sunday. And, last call is 1:30 AM on Friday & Saturdays — and 11:30 PM Monday thru Thursday.
The more I think about it, maybe a casino in Mass isn’t a good idea.
You know… Looking at the teasers for Triumph, I got to thinking that if you combined that with Barry Manilow you might have something. I think Gen-Xer’s and Gen-Y folks would flock to see Manilow singing ‘Mandy’ with the Eye of Sauron gleeming menacingly out in the background…. I feel a new Cirque show coming on. By definition, it would have to be better than Chris Angel’s show.