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Rick Simone remembers the moment he became convinced that a casino would be good for Rhode Island.
Simone, who owns the Atwells Avenue restaurant, Renaissance, and heads the pro-casino business group, Compete RI, was working for the Providence Convention and Visitors Bureau in 2003 when the city hosted the National Fraternal Order of Police Convention, the largest such gathering in the state's history. Restaurants, shops and other local businesses geared up to serve the expected 8,000 conventioneers and guests looking to spend their money.
But every day there were 14 or 15 big buses lined up outside the convention center waiting to whisk away nearly half of the attendees to the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. The big sales figures local businesses were looking for never materialized.
Not only were their customers going to a casino, they were sitting on buses for up to 2 1/2-hours round trip to get there "If they could go for 15 to 20 minutes to West Warwick," Simone wonders, "how many of those 4,000 people would have been able to go out and eat in the capital city, to go shopping in the capital city?" Some of his fellow restaurateurs and business people, namely those involved in the Rhode Island Hospitality Association's push to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment to allow a Harrah's Narragansett Indian Casino, are "stuck in a set mindframe and are not willing to hear a different set of facts and become a little more educated on the subject."
Simone, who has worked at Foxwoods as a convention manager as well as in the same position at the convention and visitors bureau, says he has a perspective from both sides of the business.
"The myth that these casinos all give away all these free meals on a constant basis and they don't send people out (to patronize local restaurants and businesses) is just that, a myth," he argues. Those perks, he says, go to a small percentage of high-rollers.
"If Foxwoods has 10,000 people a day coming through (the casino), do you think Foxwoods is giving 10,000 people a day free food? It isn't happening," Simone insists.
Foxwoods not only sends business the way of the restaurants and businesses that have grown up around the facility, they send some folks up to Providence for meals or other entertainment.
Gianfranco Marrocco, who runs Mediterraneo Caffe, another Atwells Avenue restaurant, confirms that his place sees a lot of casino VIPs who are sent to be wined and dined.
Marrocco, who belongs to Compete RI, believes that a Rhode Island casino, "would stop people from going to Connecticut and keep them in Rhode Island spending their money here."
"To think that Providence and Rhode Island would just dry up," if a casino were to open in West Warwick, "just doesn't make sense," says Clare Eckert, communications director of Rhode Islanders for Jobs and Tax Relief, the Harrah's funded advocacy group for the casino, which is working in conjunction with Compete RI.
"Contrary to popular belief," Simone notes, "it was Compete RI that approached the tribe and Harrah's (about teaming up), not the other way around.
On Tuesday, Compete RI announced that its membership rolls have swelled to 200 members representing more than a dozen industries.
"Local businesses are eager to sign up once they understand how they will benefit from the Narragansett Indian Casino," Simone boasted. "This $1 billion economic development proposal, one of the largest private capital investments in Rhode Island history, will fuel local growth by offering vendor preference for Rhode Island businesses on hundreds of millions annually in goods and service contracts."
For months now, Simone has been buttonholing his fellow businessmen, sometimes in small groups, but often just one-on-one, preching the economic benefits of a Rhode Island casino.
The Narragansett Indian Casino will attract tourists and stimulate all of Rhode Island's economy, the group asserts in its literature. The casino will increase the number of occupied hotel rooms, lengthen and ensure longer stays in the Ocean State and bring substantial new business to area restaurants and retail outlets.
"I don't think this many people would be coming out supporting the casino if they think overall that it is going to kill the capital city or it was going to kill Warwick.
Occupancy in hotels statewide in Rhode Island has been down the past three years, Simone states. He believes that is because the state isn't being marketed as a destination and we don't have enough amenities to keep ourselves a viable destination.
"Something like this is going to make Rhode Island a destination," he said. "It is going to attract those people who are driving through the state on a regular basis and you are going to attract even more than that. The bottom line is those people are going to have discretionary income they are going to spread out and it does spread out beyond the casino."
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