You Tube video courtesy of St.Louis Post Dispatch reporter Virginia Young
You can access the Missouri Department of Economic Development analysis at www.mgc.dps.mo.gov
This story is courtesy of Tim Logan and the St.Louis Post Dispatch-
After months of intrigue, it looks like a decision is coming soon on who'll win Missouri's 13th and final casino license.
The state Gaming Commission set a Dec. 1 date for discussion, and a likely vote, on selecting a "priority applicant" for the license, which is being sought by Isle of Capri Corp. in Cape Girardeau, the Koman family in north St. Louis and Epic Gaming in Sugar Creek, near Kansas City.
While the final award of the license won't happen next week – that doesn't happen until the day the casino actually opens – selecting a priority applicant essentially ends the process. Whoever is chosen can then begin construction.
The Gaming Commission is expected to weigh several factors, including a market study that was recently finished by the state Department of Economic Development. Applicants, and other casino companies, have released their own studies, each touting the virtues of their respective site. The DED study is expected to balance all those and spit out an impartial choice.
From WPSD Local 6 in Paducah-
Read the story in the Southeast Missourian.
Tim Logan of the St.Louis Post Dispatch writes about the sale of the Admiral. Read the story here.
This is from KFVS-12 TV in Cape Girardeau
by Mary Ann Maloney
CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KFVS) – Many Cape Girardeau voters are hoping the city takes a gamble on casino gambling.
On November 2nd, residents head to the polls to decide whether or not a casino belongs downtown.
The 125 million dollar facility, as proposed by the Isle of Capri Corporation, would include five restaurants, 1200 slot machines, meeting space, upper deck lounge and perhaps even a hotel someday.
The Isle of Capri group has been buying up property around the site of the old Florsheim Shoe factory for months.
There are thousands though, who are hoping Cape Girardeau residents vote down the measure come Tuesday.
Doug Austin is the spokesperson for the Quality for Life Committee in Cape Girardeau. His group got thousands of signatures to put this issue on the ballot and is working to convince people that Cape Girardeau would suffer if a casino is built here.
"What kind of legacy am I setting for my children, my grandchildren if I tell them you get something for nothing? That work is not necessary," Austin said.
Even if Cape voters say yes, the future of gambling in the rivertown is in the hands of the Missouri Gaming Commission.
The commission, made up of five men from Kansas City, St. Louis, Sedalia and Republic, Missouri, will consider how Cape residents feel about the idea before issuing the state's 13th license.
There is thought that because the closest Missouri casino to Cape is 85 miles away in Caruthersville, the market can draw new casino patrons. Isle of Capri estimates it can pull one million visitors from six states to Cape Girardeau every year.
Caruthersville has been home to Lady Luck Casino, owned and operated by the Isle of Capri, for years.
Chief of Police Chris Riggs says he can't say anything negative about the casino and what it's meant for Caruthersville. He says there has not been an up tick in crime and that the Isle of Capri has been a good corporate citizen.
Jean Trainor and her husband have owned Little Pizza Heaven for 30 years. Jean voted for the casino years ago and doesn't regret it. She says the casino has been good for the city.
Drive through Lady Luck's parking lot any given day and you'll see license plates from Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and beyond.
Business owners in downtown Cape Girardeau love the idea of 25,000 people a week visiting the city and hopefully their shops.
Some argue that this isn't about whether or not you should gamble-just don't visit the casino if you're morally opposed to it-but rather, it's about the city's chance to develop the downtown into a bustling place and generate tax revenue that would improve infrastructure, roads and schools across Cape.
The neighborhood where the Isle of Capri plans to build the casino pays about $10,000 a year now in taxes.
If a casino is approved, a license granted and the casino is built, those taxes jump up to three million dollars a year.
This isn't a new idea to Cape. In 1993 voters first said no, then later yes, to a casino, but then were passed over by the gaming commission.
History will repeat itself on November 2nd as once again voters are given the choice of whether to take a chance on gambling. Which part of the city's history will repeat itself?
Scott Moyers of the Southeast Missourian newspaper writes the story. Read it here.
Photo by g-s-h
By DICK ALDRICH
Missouri News Horizon
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – With the state’s last riverboat gaming license on the line, three casino developers made their best pitches to the state’s Gaming Commission as the Commission’s chairman repeated that none may get the license.
Isle of Capri Casino made a pitch for a location on the north side of downtown Cape Girardeau, Paragon Gaming said its site on the east side of Kansas City in the small town of Sugar Creek was best, and a group of St. Louis businessmen pushing for a boat called the Casino Celebration said they could attract significant out-of-state business with their site at the Chain of Rocks Bridge on the very northern edge of the city of St. Louis.
A fourth proposal from a group that wanted to build a casino near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was not present at the meeting. Late Tuesday, lawyers representing the North St. Louis County group sent a letter to the Gaming Commission saying the group was having trouble securing funding for their proposal.
Gaming Commission Chairman James Mathewson said that meant the Commission would not consider the group for license at this time.
“A deadline’s a deadline, and they missed their deadline for this time,” Mathewson said.
Mathewson said the Commission wasn’t prepared to make a decision on what to do with the group’s $50,000 in earnest money they had fronted to the Commission.
The three groups all made presentations about how their casinos would best serve the state. Steve Gallaway of Gaming Market Advisors, a research firm working with Isle of Capri said the Cape Girardeau site would be best because it would serve an area without other gaming opportunities and attract the most new money to the state.
Gallaway said Kansas City and St. Louis markets are saturated with casinos already and instead of bringing new money into the state, most of the business at casinos in those areas would come from other boats in the same area. He said the Isle of Capri would bring in more than $79 million in revenues and draw business from other parts of Missouri as well as Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky.
Officials with Paragon Gaming’s proposal for Sugar Creek argued that the Kansas City gaming market wasn’t saturated, but stagnant. They produced numbers that showed with every new improvement to casinos in the Kansas City area, business increased. Paragon would seek to draw visitors from the east side of Kansas City and move the center of gaming away from Kansas.
Paragon’s economist, Jim Oberkirsch, said his numbers showed a $34.5 million expansion in the market once the Sugar Creek casino goes online. He said the operation would turn a little more than $97 million in revenues while taking about $50 million in business from neighboring casinos.
Consultants for the Casino Celebration in St. Louis also disputed Gallaway’s numbers saying they would draw business from across the river in Illinois. Dan Farris told the Commission that St. Louis is the seventh largest gaming market in the country. He said his group seeks to capture only about 10 percent of the St. Louis market, but that figures out to be about $121 million in revenues in the first year.
The casino would sit just across the Mississippi River from three medium-sized Illinois towns: Granite City, Edwardsville and Alton. With support from Illinois patrons and north St. Louis residents, the Casino Celebration group figures to draw in $83 million in new revenues out of their total, with the rest coming from other nearby casino traffic.
Commission members also seemed interested in the casinos’ locations and their ease of access to major highways. Cape Girardeau City Manager Scott Meyer said he would produce a map for the Commission on the route traffic will take to get to the Isle of Capri casino from Interstate 55. Sugar Creek backers stressed the location’s proximity to Highway 291, while the St. Louis group said its casino would be an eighth of a mile south of I-270.
But when push comes to shove, it’s all going to be about money, and which developer has the best financial plan.
“Our staff and our financial people that we trust are going to dig deep into those financial arrangements,” Mathewson said. “I want to make darn sure if we’re going to issue that 13th license, the financial situation is clear in all five Commissioners’ minds before they vote.”
And if the Commission is not clear on all the financial details, Mathewson said they will not issue a license.
“The law is very clear to me on the 13th license,” Mathewson said. “It says you can’t have more than 13 casinos in the state of Missouri. It doesn’t say you have to have 13.”
