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Gambling with Waterfront Development

Last week the Erie Canal Harborfront Development Corporation unveiled a $1.4 billion plan to revitalize Buffalo’s long-neglected waterfront. This plan seems more real than previous attempts at waterfront redevelopment—there is money in place, political support and reasonable, phased objectives. But what place does the proposed Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino have in these plans? Artvoice spoke with James A. Metzger of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s Waterfront Advisory Panel for his take. Metzger, who lives in Kenmore, is also a member of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County, which will hold a fund-raiser at Hallwalls in the Church on Friday, March 24 at 7 pm. For more details, visit www.NoCasinoErie.org.

How does the Seneca’s proposed Buffalo Creek casino fit in with the latest plan to revitalize the city’s waterfront?

“It’s no fit at all. What are we trying to develop for our children and our grandchildren? Are we trying to develop a place where people want to work and live and visit? If so, a casino is not a good fit.

Our future is the thoughtful redevelopment of the entire eastern tip of Lake Erie. And rather than say the Inner and Outer Harbor—because that’s all that’s ever talked about—I would say the entire eastern tip of Lake Erie. Erie County comprises eight miles of shoreline; for the next 50 to 60 years, this is the project that could give us the jobs stimulus and the economic stimulus we are being promised in the casino.

A Seneca Nation-based, Las Vegas-style casino will be a negative aspect to the Buffalo community forever, for many different reasons.”

Can you enumerate some of those reasons?

“First of all, Las Vegas-style casinos are Class III casinos and they are illegal in New York State. And the casino experts claim that if one is built in Buffalo it will be what they call a “local-based” casino. They make a distinction between local-based casinos and tourist-based casinos. The experts claim that tourist-based casinos are successful because the tourists bring dollars in and leave those dollars behind—a net gain, if those dollars are then spent over and over again in the community.

In a local-based casino the visitors come mostly from within the local community, which means the discretionary dollars they would be spending within the community are now spent in the casino. So it’s like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking discretionary dollars out of the existing community. Those are dollars that might well have been spent in businesses populating the new waterfront development—restaurants, bars, entertainment venues, retail shops. All of the dollars spent at the casino—which is designed to keep people in, by providing everything the visitor might want, from food and drink to gift shops—are dollars that will not support the businesses and attractions we hope that a new waterfront development will attract.”

Supporters say that the proposed casino will bring jobs and an economic boost to the city’s waterfront. You obviously don’t buy that.

“All the experts who have come to Buffalo under the auspices of CACGEC in the last few years—one of whom is William Thompson from UNLV, who is touted as the foremost casino expert in the country—have been very clear about this local-based casino issue. There is no way that Buffalo is going to draw enough tourists from Niagara Falls or anywhere else to make an impact here.

According to Thompson, a casino here will provide neither a jobs nor an economic stimulus. This is not a secret; we know this from all the studies that have been done. Building a casino in the core of Buffalo will not bring the tourist trade in. BassPro might; that’s an entirely different situation. If we look way into the future on these decisions—which is where we should be looking— we might ask just how effective is BassPro going to be in attracting tourists 50 years out. It may be kind of like a restaurant that does its business and then kind of dies.

But at least it’s not sitting on sovereign Seneca land. It’s taxable land, it’s reusable, something can be done about it. It’s a mistake that can be rectified somewhere down the line. A casino on sovereign land cannot be rectified. It will remain sovereign Indian territory forever. So if a mistake is made, it cannot be corrected. Can we take that chance?”

What about the city’s share of the casino’s revenues?

“The percentage of money that is returned to the city is calculated only on slot machine revenues, not on anything else. In years one to four, 18 percent of slot revenues goes to the state; in years five to seven it’s 22 percent; and from seven years on, 25 percent goes to the state. Of that the state’s share, the city gets 25 percent, which amount to 6.25 percent. Which, according to all the experts, is not enough to balance the costs to the community in terms of infrastructure improvements, social costs, policing, etc. Most experts say it costs three times as much to host a casino as it brings in for the community.

Thompson said the only way to make a casino work here is to get more money out of the state’s share—and that is just not going to happen.”

Some people say we should let the casino go ahead because it’s better than the nothing that’s already there.

“The revitalization of the waterfront—without a casino—is our alternative to a bad project. It’s not nothing. And this plan seems to have the political and financial support it needs. But we should not sabotage it with a casino.”

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