Gaming
board votes
'No Casino' for Gettysburg
BY JAMES RADA JR.
Thurmont News Editor
GETTYSBURG,
Pa. – Gettysburg won’t be seeing a $350 million
slots parlor. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board chose locations
in the Pocono area and Lehigh Valley area for the two at-large
gaming licenses on Wednesday, Dec. 20.
“This
is a day I think we’ve all been waiting for for some
time,” said Chairman Tad Decker as he opened the meeting.
Hundreds
of people attended the meeting at the Forum across the street
from the state capital in Harrisburg to hear the decision.
The Crossroads
Gaming Resort and Spa was one of five projects vying for the
two Category 2 at-large gaming licenses in Pennsylvania. Crossroads
proposed at $300-million resort with 3,000 slot machines,
225 hotel rooms and a 30,000 square foot spa on 58 acres near
the intersection of Route 30 and U.S. 15 in Straban Township.
The defeat
is a victory for the active grassroots opposition campaign,
No Casino Gettysburg, some of whom were present at Wednesday’s
meeting. No Casino Gettysburg had collected nearly 65,000
signatures in opposition to the project. One of the biggest
concerns about the Crossroads project, specifically, was the
nearness of the resort to the Gettysburg National Battlefield.
Some opponents did not feel the resort was compatible with
area tourist attractions.
“We
are very, very grateful, and we see this as a triumph of the
power of the people,” said No Casino Chairman Susan
Star Paddock. “We were just ordinary people who went
up against some big money and some big muscle.”
The two
projects awarded the licenses are Bethlehem Sands in Lehigh
Valley and Mount Airy in the Poconos.
Discussion
on the merits of the projects was held in an executive session.
Although a supermajority of five “yes” votes was
needed on the seven-member board, the board’s decision
for Bethlehem Sands and Mount Airy was unanimous.
Decker
noted, “Today’s proceedings are the initial step
in licensing.” Though the licenses were awarded, they
were conditional on all appeals being settled, all conditions
of licensure being satisfied and all fees being paid.
Wednesday’s
meeting was the culmination of three hearings over the past
two weeks and nearly two years of sometimes-contentious debate
over the location of Pennsylvania’s slots parlors. The
law authorizing slots in Pennsylvania was passed in 2004.
It authorized 61,000 slot machines at 14 sites across the
state.
