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Midwest to Embrace Gambling
Midwest Towns Feel Gambling Is a Sure Thing
By JODI WILGOREN
OONVILLE, Mo. — To this quaint Missouri River town named for Daniel Boone's discovery of a salt lick nearby, the new Isle of Capri casino's promise is more than 800 jobs and $4.5 million in annual tax revenue for City Hall. It is seen as the long-sought catalyst that could turn an anonymous community into a regional destination.
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Already, a Holiday Inn Express has opened near the Interstate, and half a dozen new restaurants are sprouting amid the spruced-up store fronts of Main Street. With an $800,000 donation from the casino, the Friends of Historic Boonville are renovating Thespian Hall, the oldest continuously operating theater west of the Mississippi. A display at the entrance of the turquoise-and-peach gambling palace points visitors toward the Katy Trail, a 19th-century railroad now popular for hiking and biking.
"Like Highway 40 and like the river before that, this casino's going to be another turning point for Boonville," said Judy Shields, 62, a local historian whose family's roots were planted here in 1821. "I'm not saying it's Boonville's salvation, but it does bring opportunity."
The Midwest casino boom — there are now 86 commercial casinos in six states and 87 American Indian operations — is part of a broader diversification of the economy in a region long-dependent on dying industries that now increasingly relies on tourism and entertainment, not as supplemental extras but as necessary pillars. The strategy was validated this winter as mild weather and post-Sept. 11 fear of flying kept many vacationers close to home. Casino revenues here in Missouri were up 18 percent in February and 11 percent in March compared with last year, and two St. Louis casinos had their best months ever in February.
As manufacturing and agriculture have sagged, rural areas and cities alike have turned to the service sector to create jobs and generate economic activity. Casinos, which locate where factories will not and succeed where malls and multiplexes cannot, have been among the most reliable engines of change, helping to spawn glossy new museums, reconstructed downtowns and a slew of cultural festivals that draw thousands to unlikely places.
"It's not just casino and it's not just convention center and it's not just sports venue," said Don Phares, an economist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied gambling and tourism. "There's a critical mass when you get enough of these things that begins to set you apart. The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
In Deadwood, S.D., which brought commercial casinos to the Midwest in 1989, there is a Mardi Gras extravaganza and five-day summer rodeo; the actor Kevin Costner, who runs a casino in town, plans a $110 million resort.
A trio of casinos has helped bring Council Bluffs, Iowa, out of Omaha's shadow, with up to 10 million visitors a year flocking to the city of 58,000.
Then there is the mini-Orlando thriving in the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois) where modern riverboat gambling was born a decade ago. An IMAX theater just opened in Davenport, across the Mississippi River from the John Deere museum in Moline, which has logged one million guests since opening in 1997. A botanical center with meeting rooms was built on the river banks in Rock Island three years back, and there is talk of a new amphitheater, which the Davenport mayor wants to build in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody.
Before casinos, the Quad Cities "was just a river stop on I-80 — a lot of people would stop and say, `Gee, is that the Mississippi River Mark Twain wrote about?' " said Bernie Goldstein, a a Bettendorf scrap-metal magnate who turned the first riverboat into the 14-casino Isle of Capri chain.
"Now we are at the nucleus of a small recreation area," Mr. Goldstein said.
Politicians and business leaders who turned to gambling during the last recession as a stopgap measure to save hard-hit communities and buffer state budgets have seen, through the recent downturn, that casinos have become a linchpin of the region's slow but steady economic shift.
"We still have a notion in the economic development field that we can get home runs — the reality is that economic development is happening in increments," said Geoff Hewings, a professor at the University of Illinois who runs the Regional Economics Applications Lab, a research organization based in Chicago.
"As our region's economy has transformed itself to become almost as diversified as the nation as a whole, we're better off," Professor Hewings said. "The tourism industry is part of that diversification, and the casino industry is part of tourism."
In the past decade, slot machines have become as common as smokestacks on the heartland horizon. Airports in Kansas City and St. Louis, Omaha and Detroit, beckon travelers with billboards hawking Las Vegas-style blackjack and buffets. Except for Deadwood, where nearly every storefront has a gambling license, the number of casinos in the region has jumped from 38 to 46 in the past four years, with three major outlets opening as part of an effort to revive downtown Detroit in 1999 and 2000. State and local governments facing deficits have grown addicted to gambling revenue. The region's casinos paid $1.8 billion in taxes last year, up 71 percent from 1998. With 56,000 workers in 2001, up 30 percent from 1998, the Midwest's commercial casinos have helped stabilize employment rates as factories close (Indian casinos would not provide comparable numbers).
The Missouri Riverboat Gaming Association estimates that one in four of its workers is a former welfare recipient, and 16 percent came off the unemployment rolls. Buoyed by record revenues this winter, Missouri lawmakers tried to raise casino taxes and remove the state's loss limit — unique in the nation — which bars players from risking more than $500 every two hours. At the same time, the Kansas and Ohio Legislatures have bills pending to allow slot machines at racetracks, while Indiana may soon let gambling drift from boats to docks.
By JODI WILGOREN
OONVILLE, Mo. — To this quaint Missouri River town named for Daniel Boone's discovery of a salt lick nearby, the new Isle of Capri casino's promise is more than 800 jobs and $4.5 million in annual tax revenue for City Hall. It is seen as the long-sought catalyst that could turn an anonymous community into a regional destination.
Advertisement
Already, a Holiday Inn Express has opened near the Interstate, and half a dozen new restaurants are sprouting amid the spruced-up store fronts of Main Street. With an $800,000 donation from the casino, the Friends of Historic Boonville are renovating Thespian Hall, the oldest continuously operating theater west of the Mississippi. A display at the entrance of the turquoise-and-peach gambling palace points visitors toward the Katy Trail, a 19th-century railroad now popular for hiking and biking.
"Like Highway 40 and like the river before that, this casino's going to be another turning point for Boonville," said Judy Shields, 62, a local historian whose family's roots were planted here in 1821. "I'm not saying it's Boonville's salvation, but it does bring opportunity."
The Midwest casino boom — there are now 86 commercial casinos in six states and 87 American Indian operations — is part of a broader diversification of the economy in a region long-dependent on dying industries that now increasingly relies on tourism and entertainment, not as supplemental extras but as necessary pillars. The strategy was validated this winter as mild weather and post-Sept. 11 fear of flying kept many vacationers close to home. Casino revenues here in Missouri were up 18 percent in February and 11 percent in March compared with last year, and two St. Louis casinos had their best months ever in February.
As manufacturing and agriculture have sagged, rural areas and cities alike have turned to the service sector to create jobs and generate economic activity. Casinos, which locate where factories will not and succeed where malls and multiplexes cannot, have been among the most reliable engines of change, helping to spawn glossy new museums, reconstructed downtowns and a slew of cultural festivals that draw thousands to unlikely places.
"It's not just casino and it's not just convention center and it's not just sports venue," said Don Phares, an economist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied gambling and tourism. "There's a critical mass when you get enough of these things that begins to set you apart. The whole is more than the sum of its parts."
In Deadwood, S.D., which brought commercial casinos to the Midwest in 1989, there is a Mardi Gras extravaganza and five-day summer rodeo; the actor Kevin Costner, who runs a casino in town, plans a $110 million resort.
A trio of casinos has helped bring Council Bluffs, Iowa, out of Omaha's shadow, with up to 10 million visitors a year flocking to the city of 58,000.
Then there is the mini-Orlando thriving in the Quad Cities (Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline in Illinois) where modern riverboat gambling was born a decade ago. An IMAX theater just opened in Davenport, across the Mississippi River from the John Deere museum in Moline, which has logged one million guests since opening in 1997. A botanical center with meeting rooms was built on the river banks in Rock Island three years back, and there is talk of a new amphitheater, which the Davenport mayor wants to build in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody.
Before casinos, the Quad Cities "was just a river stop on I-80 — a lot of people would stop and say, `Gee, is that the Mississippi River Mark Twain wrote about?' " said Bernie Goldstein, a a Bettendorf scrap-metal magnate who turned the first riverboat into the 14-casino Isle of Capri chain.
"Now we are at the nucleus of a small recreation area," Mr. Goldstein said.
Politicians and business leaders who turned to gambling during the last recession as a stopgap measure to save hard-hit communities and buffer state budgets have seen, through the recent downturn, that casinos have become a linchpin of the region's slow but steady economic shift.
"We still have a notion in the economic development field that we can get home runs — the reality is that economic development is happening in increments," said Geoff Hewings, a professor at the University of Illinois who runs the Regional Economics Applications Lab, a research organization based in Chicago.
"As our region's economy has transformed itself to become almost as diversified as the nation as a whole, we're better off," Professor Hewings said. "The tourism industry is part of that diversification, and the casino industry is part of tourism."
In the past decade, slot machines have become as common as smokestacks on the heartland horizon. Airports in Kansas City and St. Louis, Omaha and Detroit, beckon travelers with billboards hawking Las Vegas-style blackjack and buffets. Except for Deadwood, where nearly every storefront has a gambling license, the number of casinos in the region has jumped from 38 to 46 in the past four years, with three major outlets opening as part of an effort to revive downtown Detroit in 1999 and 2000. State and local governments facing deficits have grown addicted to gambling revenue. The region's casinos paid $1.8 billion in taxes last year, up 71 percent from 1998. With 56,000 workers in 2001, up 30 percent from 1998, the Midwest's commercial casinos have helped stabilize employment rates as factories close (Indian casinos would not provide comparable numbers).
The Missouri Riverboat Gaming Association estimates that one in four of its workers is a former welfare recipient, and 16 percent came off the unemployment rolls. Buoyed by record revenues this winter, Missouri lawmakers tried to raise casino taxes and remove the state's loss limit — unique in the nation — which bars players from risking more than $500 every two hours. At the same time, the Kansas and Ohio Legislatures have bills pending to allow slot machines at racetracks, while Indiana may soon let gambling drift from boats to docks.