If Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has his way, casino gambling will be on the Bay State’s political agenda this year.
The Governor has proposed bringing three huge casino resorts to Massachusetts, and he’d like one of them to be located in the Greater Boston area.
Coincidentally, New Hampshire lawmakers have also been looking at proposals to allow video slot machines at Rockingham Park in Salem.
But it’s not clear what affect a Boston area casino would have on the Rockingham plan.
When Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced that he was proposing casinos in his state, he laid out the benefits he thought they would bring.
Three high quality and properly sited resort casinos would, using conservative estimates, generate over 2 billion dollars annually in new economic activity, create over 20, 000 new jobs at good wages with benefits, employ tens of thousands of construction workers and bolster tourism, already a significant industry here in the commonwealth.
And some of those gambling tourists would likely be from New Hampshire.
What does that do to the proposal to put 3,000 video slots at Rockingham Park?
Nothing, says Rich Killion, the spokesman for Millenium Gaming, the company involved.
He says Millenium has already told state lawmakers that it would spend 400 million dollars on renovating the one-hundred year old horse track.
It is Millenium’s plans to move on regardless of what happens in Massachusetts. We feel there will probably be a marginal impact on what may transpire, but we feel that rockingham park can really go back to being the premiere attraction in the region if the legislature in our state, new Hampshire should choose to go in that direction.
On a recent afternoon, several bettors at Rockingham said they fully supported the plan to bring video slots to the track.
There was no live racing that day, but a few dozen men had gathered to wager on simulcast races from other tracks.
They were mostly older men.
In fact, one bettor likened Rockingham’s grandstand to a nursing home, given that he and most of the men were senior citizens.
87 year old Edward Mulcahy from Manchester sat alone, watching a race that he had bet on from the Belmont Track in New York.
…and its wild wizard the one to catch. Ahh, let’s see….there’s one, nine ….nine one…..its on fire the winner. Nine, one, two, I lose. ….
Mulcahy said he’s been coming to Rockingham for years, and that the crowds have thinned out quite a bit since his youth.
But he bets that New Hampshire will fall behind the Bay State, if Governor Patrick’s casino plan gets going before anything at Rockingham.
Well if that happens first, forget this. It, it, the one that moves first, if New Hampshire puts them in, Massachusetts will never do it. It could be a roadblock to them. And it has been and will be.
Rockingham Park took in bets worth about 88 million dollars in 2006.
That was almost 4 million less than the year before.
This year, in 7 and a half months, the track has taken in about ten percent less than the same period in 2006.
Ed Callahan, Rockingham’s president, says the betting totals have been declining ever since casinos opened in Connecticut in the 1990s.
And bingo, charity poker and daily simulcast racing haven’t made up the difference.
Callahan says renovating the track and adding the slots makes a lot of sense, since its right next to Massachusetts, where 80 percent of the track’s revenue comes from.
The fact is that this location is as good as it gets in New England. You’re right on a highway. You’ve got a hundred and seventy acres to work with. Preferably, you could keep racing here and have racing along with some kind of gaming facility and that would be the best of both worlds, I think, for everybody.
Millenium Gaming, the firm with the option on Rockingham, says the 3,000 machines it proposes would each take in about 370 dollars a day.
A gambling industry analyst says he thinks that estimate might be too high.
Dr. Clyde Barrow at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth says machines like those typically take in about 250 dollars a day.
But he says he doesn’t think lower totals or competition with a Boston casino would doom the Rockingham project.
Barrow says he’s seen Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut nicely coexist with Twin River in Rhode Island, a nearby dog track with video lottery machines.
They both opened in the same year, in 1992, and meanwhile you’ve watched the casino grow from zero to one point six billion dollars per year in total revenues, and at the same time Twin River has grown to over 400 million per year in gaming revenues.
New Hampshire gets a cut of the money that is wagered at Rockingham, and the state’s three dog tracks.
But as betting totals have declined, so have the state’s tax revenues from the tracks.
Millenium estimates the slots at Rockingham alone could bring in 100 million dollars to state coffers.
Representative Christine Hamm of Hopkinton hasn’t supported gambling, but heads a subcommittee looking at the issue.
She says the Millenium’s figures are attractive, especially since the state is facing rising costs in education and in bridge and highway reconstruction.
And she says it is sometimes tempting to think there might be another source of revenue for the state.
We daily hear….reasons that we need revenue. I mean we get something you know the week of the flooding you know for dam maintenance, and we really don’t know where we’re going to get the money to pay for it.
New Hampshire House members have in the past consistently voted against allowing video slot machines.
But State Senator Lou D’Allesandro of Manchester says he thinks this time might be different.
You know before we just talked about it. But we realize it’s viable. And why is it viable? Because rhode island has met with success, maine has met with success, west Virginia has met with success, Delaware has met with success. There are success models that carry a decade’s worth of scrutiny.
Senator D’Allesandro says he plans to introduce a new gambling bill to the Legislature when it convenes in January.
But it’s not clear if the Legislature is ready to change its stand on the issue.
And Governor Lynch has also indicated he’s not ready to sign on to any such plan.
He’s said he’d only consider supporting new gambling if it didn’t adversely affect the state’s quality of life.
