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Bethlehem bets casino will spur renewal
Sunday, May 13, 2007BY GUY STERLINGOf The (Newark, N.J.) Star-Ledger
BETHLEHEM - There was a time when most people growing up in the Lehigh Valley went to work at the enormous steel plant headquartered here.
But those days have gone the way of, well, the steel mill. The second-largest of its kind nationally in its heyday, the mill's shutdown nearly a decade ago left the area looking for another economic engine.
Now Bethlehem is ready to take a gamble on its future. Literally.
Tomorrow, construction workers will break ground on the city's own gambling hall, on the old steel mill property and expected to open late next year.
It will mark Pennsylvania's latest bid to woo gamblers away from Atlantic City, N.J. Four slot parlors have opened in the state since late last year and at least a half-dozen will be open on New Jersey's border by next year.
"There's a very real and palpable spirit in this community, a sense of resilience and can-do," said Mayor John B. Callahan, a native of Bethlehem and married father of three. "It's rooted in the city's blue-collar ethic."
The location -- a few miles off Interstate 78 and a mere dozen miles over the border from northern New Jersey -- makes it a sure thing, said Callahan, 37. He points to the fact high population areas in New Jersey such as Elizabeth, Hackensack, New Brunswick, Newark, Paterson and Trenton are all closer to Bethlehem than to Atlantic City.
The casino will open with 3,000 slot machines (not video lottery terminals). By the summer of 2009, plans call for an additional 2,000 slot machines, a 300-room hotel, retail space, restaurants and a convention center. The National Museum of Industrial History will be part of the project, too.
Preserving as much of the steel mill as possible was a condition from the outset when the city awarded the contract to Las Vegas Sands, the largest international gambling company in the world by market value. Close to two dozen buildings will be saved and incorporated into the $600 million redevelopment. Among them are a massive row of 20-story blast furnaces and Machine Shop No. 2, once the largest industrial facility under a single roof in the world. Almost a dozen structures will be lost.
The city is banking on a guaranteed $8.7 million annually in casino revenues to "stabilize city finances."
"There was never what you would call a depression here," said Dale Korchard, a former businessman who serves as executive director of Lehigh University's Community and Regional Office, an outreach program. "There was a slow decline over the late 1900s, but then a lot of small businesses came in and grew."
Olympus, LSI Logic and B. Braun Medical are but a few of the bigger companies that have set up shop here in recent years, while the Lehigh Valley Industrial Park in Bethlehem has generated 25,000 jobs over the last 40 years and continues to grow. And the area also has started to attract small high-tech firms, such as computer chip and optic companies.
The addition of the casino, and all that comes with it, has left the city's 73,000 residents with mixed feelings.
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