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Star: Casino eyed as city saviour

wyliepoon

wyliepoon

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The next Detroit, with all its casinos? Perhaps.

Link to article

Casino eyed as city saviour


Mayor David Miller and several high-ranking Toronto councillors yesterday said they would consider a full casino at Woodbine Racetrack to help dig the city out of its financial misery.

But they would want a bigger share of revenues than they get now from Woodbine, which has slot machines but not roulette, craps or other gambling games found at other Ontario casinos.

And getting one would take a strong selling job at Queen's Park, which appears solidly against creating another full commercial casino to compete with its existing four.

Late on Tuesday, council approved a massive $750 million development at Woodbine racetrack, in the city's northwest corner, including a hotel, shopping, a skating rink and a large area that could easily house a full casino similar to Casino Niagara or Casino Rama.

Woodbine officials yesterday said a casino is in the province's hands

"There's been pressure for years for a full casino in Toronto," said Councillor Brian Ashton (Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest), a member of the executive committee. "Casinos are now centrepieces of many communities ... I would say it's probably time to roll the dice again and review this and determine if it's beneficial to Toronto."

Miller told the Star he hasn't thought through the implications of a full casino at Woodbine, though he has said in the past that he disapproved of a city casino – including during the 2003 election, when mayoral rival Tom Jacobek floated the idea.

"I'm opposed to a new casino in Toronto, but this isn't a new casino," he said. "However to have one there we'd have to significantly change the financial arrangements with the province, because if there is a casino all the money goes to them and a pittance comes to us. I couldn't consider it unless the financial arrangements would change."

The city faces a potential $575 million budget shortfall next year. On Tuesday, Miller announced a "cost-containment" strategy that could mean large cuts in services.

"A casino in Toronto could get us out of our budget hole," said Councillor Howard Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence). "But if there is one, we want the same deal that the province gets."

Woodbine has 2,000 slot machines; the city gets 5 per cent of the revenue on the first 450 machines, and 2 per cent from the rest. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG), run by the province, receives half. It wasn't clear last night how much the city earns from its share, or how much it might expect to garner from a municipal casino.

"The existing horse races and gaming are going to be the anchor to the (Woodbine) development," said Jane Holmes, vice-president of corporate affairs for Woodbine Entertainment Group.

"We clearly think that if there is going to be a casino anywhere in Toronto, it should be here."

But licensing a casino is up to the province, and "That proposal is not under consideration from the provincial perspective," said Amy Tang, an aide to Public Infrastructure Renewal Minister David Caplan, who oversees gaming in Ontario. "Because we did announce a gaming strategy in January 2005 where we said no new gaming sites. That is still in effect."

Sources at Queen's Park said consultants hired by Woodbine have been lobbying the province to lift that moratorium.

One Liberal insider confided that even if a GTA gaming house were in the cards, it would not be in the province's interest to permit someone other than OLG to own it, because Queen's Park would make far less from such a facility.

About one-third of the Niagara casino's customers and half of Casino Rama's players come from the GTA. OLG also owns two commercial casinos with private-sector partners, in Niagara Falls and Windsor.

And it runs five charity casinos in Brantford, Sault Ste. Marie, Point Edward, Thunder Bay and the Thousand Islands.

"It would be political suicide for them to give a casino to Toronto and hurt the other ones," said one councillor.
 
If we're actually going to build a casino, it's insane to put it out in Woodbine. If we make that choice, it should be downtown, perhaps on the waterfront, and all the revenues should be dedicated to city projects. No half-assed, suburban islands in a sea of parking, with half the revenues going to a horse racing club, sneaking in through the back door.
 
As per the article, the province decides whether to grant casino licenses - and it highlighted exactly why the province won't do that for Toronto. Nice idea, but it runs into jurisdictional issues rather quickly.

AoD
 
Maybe it'll be put down at the waterfront, the new Casino, Film and Power District.
 
I'd be all for a casino by the water! It's such a classy concept - if done right it could become a wonderful new landmark drawing thousands of people, who wouldn't give it a second thought, to the waterfront. Imagine a landmark, with a generous ~15 storey 5 star hotel/casino project. Casinos know the profit they'd make, lets see if they'd hire a famous architect to design Toronto's new postcard playboy.
 
I'm all for a casino in the city, but one by the waterfront sounds so rust belt trashy to me. We just need some properly planned redevelopment, like what's going on, not some trashy rust belt strategic plan. We already have a waterfront @ their type of level, we don't need to keep doing the same to go no where (that this city seems to like to do).
 
jeicow said:
I'm all for a casino in the city, but one by the waterfront sounds so rust belt trashy to me. We just need some properly planned redevelopment, like what's going on, not some trashy rust belt strategic plan. We already have a waterfront @ their type of level, we don't need to keep doing the same to go no where (that this city seems to like to do).
Click to expand...

Rust Belt casinos tend to be loud, crass and tasteless.. I'm sure one being built on Toronto's waterfront would be very well designed, and dare I say, elegant? Definitely!
 
I'm not opposed to a casino, but the case for one more saving the city is a little overstated.
 
faktencasino2.jpg



who gave biff tannen the sports almanac? ;)
 
Weird: Biff Tannen looks vaguely like Mel Lastman in that photo.



Is this an omen of some sort?



Mel's Badboy Waterfront Discount Casino where noooooooobody wants to miss the action?
 
can the city put aside a billion, build a casino & use all profits on the city? is it legal for the city to own a casino?

what kind of profits can a toronto casino pull in annually?
 
Couldnt this just be an amendment to the new City of Toronto Act? As one of the new revenue-generating powers, the province could give the City of Toronto the right to build and operate it's own casinos, granted it does not exceed X condition and Y condition (ie # of casinos in the city, max size etc). Revenues would be for the city only. That way the province has nothing to do with "giving" Toronto money, and Toronto gets to govern it's own assets.
Sure, this will cut into Provincial Casinos profitability, but it is the least that the province can do after downloading millions of dollars of services to the city.
A downtown location would be best as it would hit up all those tourists for their cash, not just local residents.

Question: who owns/operates all those "casino" slot machine outlets in London? They are EVERYWHERE downtown, but not in mega complexes.
 
Star

Link to article

Casino plan shaping up as a crapshoot

Will Rexdale gambling house be a boon or a blight? Reaction suggests the answer is a definite `Yes'
Jul 20, 2007 04:30 AM
Jen Gerson
Staff Reporter

Depending on who you ask, Rexdale could be host to the next Las Vegas Strip – or a new proposed casino could suck money from the local economy.

Reaction to a possible gambling house varied yesterday. As the TTC wavers and the mayor threatens to cut services, city councillors have suggested that gambling revenues from a possible casino at the recently approved Woodbine entertainment complex could save the ailing municipal budget, bringing in hundreds of millions per year.

The Woodbine Live development, near highways 409 and 427, which will build shopping centres, clubs and a hotel around the Woodbine racetrack, is expected to add 10,000 jobs and revitalize an area better known for violence and poverty.

Absent from the plan was a full casino, though Woodbine already has about 2,000 slot machines. But early this week, the area's counsellor, Rob Ford, said that the plans left a gap for one, should the provincial government lift its cap on them.

Experts say that relying on gambling revenues can be a drain to a community. In an area like Rexdale, advocates worry about tempting its low-income residents with a get-rich-quick dream that hides the problems of a community suffering a critical lack of infrastructure.

"I'm very worried,"said Ekua Asabea Blair, the executive director of the Rexdale Community Health Centre. It's a moral issue, she added. "I think that it's wrong to put that temptation so close by."

People in the lowest income brackets gamble away a higher proportion of their disposable income than do those in the highest income brackets, said Rob Simpson, CEO of the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre in Guelph.

Debts can quickly accrue and "many problem gamblers believe that the only way to get out of the problem is to gamble more."

While not everyone who gambles has a problem, the more available gambling sites are, the more problem gamblers there will be, he said.

When Ann McRae, a lawyer at the Rexdale legal clinic, saw the plans for the Woodbine Live complex she said: "Of course they want to build a casino. Why else would they build an enormous hotel? Not so that tourists would come to Rexdale."

But she said she's more concerned that developers hire local labour than about the evils of gambling.

"A full casino is going to give more opportunity for skilled jobs than slot machines," she said.

Casinos do have a history of building depressed areas up, said Jim Kilby, a professor of gaming at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Atlantic City was basically a slum when they started to build the casino," he said. When the money pours in, so do jobs, development and the infrastructure. Gambling towns are rich towns, he says.

"In Las Vegas, the least crime areas are the areas where they have casinos," he said, adding that a city of Toronto's size could handle three to four casinos, easily.

"Everyone thinks that a casino is a panacea to their economic problems. But that's not clear," Simpson said. Gambling revenues, after all, don't materialize out of thin air.

"Where does that development come from? For sure, it comes from the local community," he said. Every million dollars spent on gambling is a million dollars not spent on furniture or food or industries that create non-gambling jobs.

*****

Once again, I have to bring up Detroit. Is it the exception to the rule of to the above article?
 
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