Feature Article |
Gaming the System
By Matthew Teague
I VISITED FOXWOODS’ current casino, near Mystic, Connecticut, to get a sense of what’s in store for Philadelphia.
It’s in a rural area — the closest airport is about an hour away — and to get there, I drove through pastureland that probably looked much the same when its sole residents were the Mashantucket Pequots, who were only a tribe then, and not casino proprietors.
In the lull of the idyll, I rounded a wooded bend, Dorothy-like, and saw the Emerald City standing over the landscape. It loomed endless and green and bright, but mostly endless: eight million square feet, 30 floors tall in places and nearly a mile from one end to the other. The philosophy is clear: Bigger is better.
As I pulled into the gleaming garage, I saw no gates in or out, and as a Philadelphian, I felt an unfamiliar thrill: free parking. The casino’s interior also resembled the Emerald City, a town within a town. The glitz reached a crescendo on the slots floors: blinging and bleeping, flashing and chirping.
The grip of the slots floor is incomparable to any other experience in America today. Drugs can’t compare, because they only offer the thrill of sensation, where slots offer the possibility of actual enrichment. Even man’s eternal nemesis, sex, can’t compare, because the slots floor’s appeal cuts across genders, ages, races and creeds. On Foxwoods’ slots floor, the one immobile, silent feature of the room was the people themselves: They sat hunched with index fingers fixed to “spin” buttons, and many were literally plugged into the machines, thanks to a new slots innovation: A small bungee cord ran from their shirt pockets to a card in the slot machine that recorded their betting totals, qualifying them for comps — they were mainlining the thrill of slots. Which can take over a person: A few months ago, a pregnant woman in Atlantic City noticed pains while she played the penny slots. She eventually told a security guard, who thought she was joking. A few minutes later, she delivered her son on the floor; she had played penny slots through most of her labor.
Casinos work on states the same way they work on individuals: Lobbyists, traffic planners, entertainers, chefs and vendors are the civic equivalent of the sashaying lady who offers gamblers free drinks — only these comps are on a grand scale. They extend serving trays loaded with entertainment, shopping, giant tax payments and free traffic upgrades.
Consider Foxwoods: It picked what appeared to be the worst-situated of the sites, on an empty lot on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia. It’s a traffic nightmare already. Traffic is in some ways the single most important aspect of a casino’s site, because if traffic is slow, shoppers of all sorts — not just gamblers — will stay away. Frank DiCicco, the area’s city councilman, says the delicate ecosystem of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods — particularly the retail shops that keep a place vibrant — won’t survive the casinos due to the traffic. “Something’s going to break,” DiCicco says. “It’s going to be the casinos or the retail.”
The trouble with Columbus Boulevard is simple. It’s popular, too narrow, and clogged by a terrible stoplight scheme. But in phase one of the project alone, Foxwoods plans to make $5 million in traffic improvements, and Dave Coskey had told me that traffic wouldn’t slow down on Columbus Boulevard. On the contrary, incredibly, he said that after the estimated 5.8 million casino visitors show up, “Traffic will flow 32 percent better than it does today. At the worst possible peak times.”
The miracle of heavier-but-faster traffic is another grand-scale comp. Just like smoother roads, lower taxes, better schools, economic development and more.
They’re all comps paid, small and large. So what is the cost?
It’s in a rural area — the closest airport is about an hour away — and to get there, I drove through pastureland that probably looked much the same when its sole residents were the Mashantucket Pequots, who were only a tribe then, and not casino proprietors.
In the lull of the idyll, I rounded a wooded bend, Dorothy-like, and saw the Emerald City standing over the landscape. It loomed endless and green and bright, but mostly endless: eight million square feet, 30 floors tall in places and nearly a mile from one end to the other. The philosophy is clear: Bigger is better.
As I pulled into the gleaming garage, I saw no gates in or out, and as a Philadelphian, I felt an unfamiliar thrill: free parking. The casino’s interior also resembled the Emerald City, a town within a town. The glitz reached a crescendo on the slots floors: blinging and bleeping, flashing and chirping.
The grip of the slots floor is incomparable to any other experience in America today. Drugs can’t compare, because they only offer the thrill of sensation, where slots offer the possibility of actual enrichment. Even man’s eternal nemesis, sex, can’t compare, because the slots floor’s appeal cuts across genders, ages, races and creeds. On Foxwoods’ slots floor, the one immobile, silent feature of the room was the people themselves: They sat hunched with index fingers fixed to “spin” buttons, and many were literally plugged into the machines, thanks to a new slots innovation: A small bungee cord ran from their shirt pockets to a card in the slot machine that recorded their betting totals, qualifying them for comps — they were mainlining the thrill of slots. Which can take over a person: A few months ago, a pregnant woman in Atlantic City noticed pains while she played the penny slots. She eventually told a security guard, who thought she was joking. A few minutes later, she delivered her son on the floor; she had played penny slots through most of her labor.
Casinos work on states the same way they work on individuals: Lobbyists, traffic planners, entertainers, chefs and vendors are the civic equivalent of the sashaying lady who offers gamblers free drinks — only these comps are on a grand scale. They extend serving trays loaded with entertainment, shopping, giant tax payments and free traffic upgrades.
Consider Foxwoods: It picked what appeared to be the worst-situated of the sites, on an empty lot on Columbus Boulevard in South Philadelphia. It’s a traffic nightmare already. Traffic is in some ways the single most important aspect of a casino’s site, because if traffic is slow, shoppers of all sorts — not just gamblers — will stay away. Frank DiCicco, the area’s city councilman, says the delicate ecosystem of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods — particularly the retail shops that keep a place vibrant — won’t survive the casinos due to the traffic. “Something’s going to break,” DiCicco says. “It’s going to be the casinos or the retail.”
The trouble with Columbus Boulevard is simple. It’s popular, too narrow, and clogged by a terrible stoplight scheme. But in phase one of the project alone, Foxwoods plans to make $5 million in traffic improvements, and Dave Coskey had told me that traffic wouldn’t slow down on Columbus Boulevard. On the contrary, incredibly, he said that after the estimated 5.8 million casino visitors show up, “Traffic will flow 32 percent better than it does today. At the worst possible peak times.”
The miracle of heavier-but-faster traffic is another grand-scale comp. Just like smoother roads, lower taxes, better schools, economic development and more.
They’re all comps paid, small and large. So what is the cost?
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