Published: November 19, 2008 6:00 a.m. Little chance for casino Though local businessmen say they are creating a company called “Summit City Grand Resort and Casino Holdings,” don’t expect a casino to open in Fort Wayne anytime soon – if ever.
Hoosiers and their elected lawmakers should be wary of any attempt to further expand gambling. Additional gambling opportunities should not be relied upon for government revenue because they will largely siphon business from existing casinos.
Desire for a casino is understandable. In addition to initial construction business and the addition of an ongoing attraction to lure visitors to the city, the casinos pay host fees to local governments. The Blue Chip in Michigan City, for example, paid $3.7 million in the last fiscal year.
Owners of the Michigan City casino would also be principal opponents to a Fort Wayne casino because it would take business away from the Blue Chip, which has a heavy daily population of northeast Indiana visitors and is already losing business to a new casino in nearby New Buffalo, Mich. Owners of the state’s newest casino and the one closest to Fort Wayne, Hoosier Park horse track in Anderson, would also object.
In granting casino licenses, the state inexplicably authorized two side-by-side riverboat casinos in Gary, and the owner is now open to moving one of them to boost faltering attendance. Indeed, the casinos informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that they defaulted on a loan, failing to make a $24 million interest payment due last month.
Former Sen. Robert Meeks of LaGrange late last year proposed moving one of the Gary boats to a Steuben County lake, legislation that went nowhere. But it did fuel the idea that one of the boats could go onto a Fort Wayne river.
The floating casinos, however, are hardly old-fashioned riverboats. And the wide swings in the depth of the city’s three rivers would make mooring a permanent casino in the city a major – and expensive – engineering challenge, if it is even possible. Plus, the owner would have to reach some sort of settlement that would likely divert some local government payments away from Fort Wayne to Gary.
The more likely scenario would be allowing the city’s off-track betting center – which Hoosier Park owns – to add gambling machines, much as the Anderson horse park did. Adding a few hundred machines would turn the OTB into a casino.
But such a move would still cause opposition from the competition, and members of the Indiana General Assembly seem to realize the state has enough casinos and are unlikely to permit more.
Just as important, despite anecdotal support for a local casino in conversations and the occasional letter to the editor, no organized movement has arisen to bring in a local casino. Indeed, opposition to expanded local gambling could be strong in the City of Churches.
Indiana casinos along the Ohio River and on Lake Michigan have large populations of out-of-state residents to draw from. The new horse-track casinos in Anderson and Shelbyville get customers from the large Indianapolis market and beyond. There is no guarantee the Fort Wayne population would be big enough to support a casino, and the Ohio and Michigan areas closest to the Summit City are largely rural areas that lack population density.
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