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While Rockaway Beach’s city government remains in turmoil, a representative from Barden Development Inc. said on Tuesday the company still wants to build a riverboat casino in the town of 600 people.
“We’re still very interested,” said Steve Lemberg, Barden Development executive vice president. “We’re just waiting for them to get in harmony.”
Barden Development, which already owns five casinos across the nation, was the only company to submit a proposal to build a casino in the Rockaway Beach. On Aug. 10, Lemberg pitched the project to the city’s board of aldermen. It included a $144 million riverboat casino in the city’s downtown featuring 57,000 square feet of gaming space, more than 1,300 slot machines, more than 40 game tables and about 2,100 parking spaces and 800 to 900 new permanent, full-time jobs.
Less than a week later the city’s gaming committee asked the board of aldermen to approve Barden as the city’s partner in the endeavor.
“It would be in the city’s best interest to move forward with this quickly and make a decision,” then Gaming Committee Chairman Chuck Walters said at an Aug. 8 meeting to the board.
Mayor Tom Strom discouraged the idea of making a decision that night because he said he had been advised by the city’s gaming attorney to “investigate” some of Barden’s casinos before approving the company.
On Aug. 17, while the mayor was in Tunica, Miss., visiting a Fitzgerald’s Casino that Barden owns, the board of aldermen called a special meeting to approve Barden, contingent upon the “satisfactory completion of a background check and a negotiation and execution of a funding agreement and development agreement.”
“We did that just to show them we were still interested,” Alderman Sue Riggs said to Strom at a special meeting Sept. 14 after accusing him of holding up the gaming project. “We had to wait and do that while you were out of town.”
On Aug. 30 the board met again to discuss an ordinance that would dissolve the city’s current gaming committee, establish a new gaming committee and approve a funding agreement with Barden for the casino project.
The mayor chose to veto the ordinance, saying he had not had time to review it, which prompted the aldermen to vote to begin impeachment proceedings against Strom.
The veto was overturned by the aldermen at a Sept. 11 meeting causing the ordinance to take effect.
The aldermen have voiced that they feel the mayor should reappoint the same members from the old gaming committee to the new committee, but it has yet to happen. The board has refused to approve any of the appointees the mayor has made that were not on the old committee.
Riggs said she feels not having the same committee could hurt the city’s relationship with Barden Development.
“They want to know that they are working with a committee whose hearts are all in it,” Riggs said Sept. 14. “And our old committee’s hearts are.”
Lemberg said that the company would work with whoever the city appointed to the committee.
“It’s not our job to tell Rockaway Beach who to put on their committee,” Lemberg said. “We’ll work with whoever they appoint.
“We may have to re-evaluate if we think they’re going in the wrong direction, but we’re not jumping to any conclusions.”
Lemberg said the company would continue to wait for Rockaway Beach to settle the problems within its government before moving along with the casino project.
“There is no urgency to move forward,” Lemberg said. “We’ll just wait for them to get their house in order so we can work with a unified front.”
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