City officials to decide on location of new Philadelphia casino

On behalf of Kaplin Stewart Meloff Reiter & Stein, P.C. posted in Construction on Jan 2, 2013.

In a recent post, we mentioned that the state of Pennsylvania has already received six applications for a casino license. One of the developers wants to redevelop the former Inquirer building and surrounding properties as part of a casino project. The others are set to present their proposals at the Pennsylvania Convention Center next month.

The fact that there is so much interest in constructing a new casino-it would be Pennsylvania’s fifth-is somewhat surprising, given that there was significant opposition last year among lawmakers. In addition, the quality of the applicants goes to show that the success of a new casino is a real possibility.

The stadium district in South Philadelphia is reportedly a popular location of choice among the competitors. This is probably because the stadium district is readily accessible to potential patrons from New Jersey and the Pennsylvania suburbs.

If the gaming board decides to award a license, gaming analysts predict that there will be a certain amount of lost business among the four existing casinos in the market. Still, is still room for an overall in gaming revenues.

Developer Bart Blatstein, whom we mentioned previously, plans to build a 123,000-square-foot casino that would occupy less than 20 percent of the space of his three-block entertainment project. Blatstein’s projected would be a “resort complex” that would hopefully spur development along North Broad Street.

Mayor Nutter and his economic team, it is said, are favorable to the concept of having an entertainment center two blocks from the Convention Center. But, of course, city officials are not the ones to make the decision on the new casino location.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, “With vetting set to begin, a look at Philadelphia’s casino applicants,” Jennifer Lin & Suzette Parmley, December 31, 2012

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