TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER
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Gambling boom has given bettors much choice |
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BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A decade ago,
about the only things swallowing coins around here were parking meters and
telephone booths. Today, there is a whole new generation of hungry machines. Actions by revenue-starved governments in New York, Ontario and the Seneca Indian Nation have touched off a gambling boom that has upward of 13,000 slot machines spinning and ringing within an hour's drive. They can be found at two Seneca Indian Nation casinos _ one in Niagara Falls and another in rural Salamanca, at two government-owned casinos in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and at horse-racing tracks in Fort Erie, Ontario, and suburban Buffalo. So far, there has been no shortage of people to feed them. Not even an emergency evacuation announcement was enough to come between bettors and Lady Luck on a recent afternoon at Seneca Niagara casino. When a siren sounded, followed by instructions to leave the building, only a few people headed for the doors. A later announcement indicated a false alarm. With draw that powerful, it's no wonder the region seems intent on becoming Atlantic City's baby brother of the Northeast. Grace Kolander of Butler, Pa., a veteran of many gambling excursions, took a tour bus to the Seneca Niagara casino recently and declared it "very nice." But she doubted the area would ever give the bigger gambling hot spots, with more casinos and amenities, a serious challenge. "It would never rise to a level of Vegas," she said. Nevertheless, gambling proponents are confident they can carve out a niche of their own. "It's proven itself already," said Seneca President Rickey Armstrong after the tribe broke ground in May on a 600-room spa hotel adjacent to Seneca Niagara. Bettors plunked down a remarkable $4 billion during the Niagara Falls casino's first year in business. As host city, cash-strapped Niagara Falls received about $9 million from the Senecas' slot machine profits last year. Buffalo, desperate for revenues after decades of manufacturing losses, is hoping for a similar windfall from a planned third Seneca casino. The city is waging a legal battle to compel the Senecas to build in Buffalo instead of the suburban Cheektowaga site preferred by the tribe. "We're talking about $15 million in revenues, 2,500 jobs," Mayor Anthony Masiello said. "I'm not going to give up." While the state has given its blessing to casinos, video slot machines and lotteries as revenue sources, the approval is not universal. One of the state Assembly's biggest gambling opponents said those left to treat gambling addiction are already overworked and that increasing gambling opportunities will only add to the problem. "We're at saturation point now, but still some seek to increase access to gambling and to ruin more lives," said Sen. Frank Padavan, a Queens Republican. "This isn't economic development and it isn't an acceptable funding source for anything," he said. Although casino-style gambling is a novelty on this side of the border, the Canadian side has had more time to measure its economic impact. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. credits its three public casinos and the additional tourists they attract with more than $2 billion annually in economic activity in the province. Its Casino Niagara in Niagara Falls was on track to gross about $500 million this fiscal year, and has fed a flurry of development and tourism in the Canadian city. With the opening of a second Niagara Falls, Ontario, casino June 10, Mayor Ted Salci projects 20 million tourist visits a year, double the number from the mid-1990s. But it's not just the big casinos that are finding success. During their first six days in operation in March, 1,000 electronic slot-like machines known as video lottery terminals at a racetrack in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg earned nearly $1 million, the state Lottery Division reported. The profit is to be split by New York and the racing industry. The machines were approved at Fairgrounds Gaming & Raceway and seven other locations in the state as a way to generate revenue after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Those behind the area's gambling boom don't appear concerned about oversaturation. "It brings people to the area," said Teresa Roncon of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. "Competition is good. Competition is a healthy thing." G. Michael Brown, president and chief executive of Seneca Gaming Corp., said the Senecas' Niagara Falls operations and those just across the border complement each other. The real competition for high-rollers, he said, is with other gambling destinations. That's where the spa hotel, with its penthouses, Swedish massages and other amenities, comes in. "It's going to give us an opportunity to cater to national and international travelers," Brown said. "It will be a four-star hotel with all the amenities of anything that exists in Atlantic City or Las Vegas." Although proponents of gambling in New York predicted casinos would spin off additional development, that has yet to happen in the 18 months Seneca Niagara has been open. That disappoints Seneca Gaming Corp. chairman Cyrus Schindler, who said gambling alone will not be enough to draw the kinds of crowds to the area that he and others are hoping for. "We're kind of looking to have other people around us for things for people to do," he said. When Biloxi, on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, embraced casino gambling after the state legalized it on the water on a limited basis, additional development was all but guaranteed. "One of the good things that the state did was come back and say, you have to have 100 percent investment on land of what you have in the water, excluding parking garages," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said. "So that meant that they'd have to build hotels, that they'd have to build ancillary theaters, amenities on land." Biloxi, he said, has gone from near bankruptcy 11 years ago to thriving and is now the third largest U.S. gambling destination, behind Las Vegas, where gambling is a $4.7 billion industry, and Atlantic City's $4.3 billion gambling empire. "If things go as they're going now, this year in Biloxi, Mississippi, alone, the gross gaming revenue will reach over $1 billion," Holloway said. The city gets 4 percent of that amount, with 60 percent going to education and public safety for the city and county and the rest into the city's general fund. There has been a darker side, Holloway noted, including cases of city employees caught embezzling to feed gambling addictions. |
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