ELECTIONS : Card Club Plans on the Table : Gambling: It’s a familiar refrain for the people of Inglewood and Hawthorne. Can the cash-strapped cities continue to say no to casinos?

Inglewood voters have twice refused to allow a card club in their city, but when the latest proposal surfaced this summer, City Council members began fantasizing about what they would do with the city’s share of the winnings.

“Parks, open space,” Councilman Garland Hardeman said as the council prepared in June to put the issue on the ballot for a third time. “A community center . . . an exposition hall,” Councilman Daniel Tabor said.

In Hawthorne, the story is much the same. City Council members, though they disagree on a card club proposal being debated there, have nevertheless tentatively earmarked the first $300,000 a month in gambling revenues for the city’s understaffed Police Department.

Tantalized by estimates that gaming revenues could reach $10 million a year, can cash-strapped cities say no to card clubs?

Hawthorne and Inglewood voters will give their answer on Tuesday when they approve or reject card club ballot measures, bringing to a close two of the South Bay’s liveliest and costliest referendum campaigns.

The campaigns have been financed largely by two sets of gaming interests--would-be card club owners and current club owners trying to quash competition. But they have stirred debate in both communities about how card clubs would affect crime rates, city tax revenues and employment.

Inglewood’s Proposition E asks voters to allow Hollywood Park to put a card club in its Cary Grant Pavillion. To sweeten the deal, park owners have offered the city free land for its new police headquarters.

Card Club supporters in Inglewood, including City Manager Paul Eckles, Mayor Edward Vincent and the entire City Council, say the card club would generate 2,600 permanent jobs and at least $10 million a year in new tax revenues. That is a golden opportunity, Vincent said, in a community plagued with chronic poverty and unemployment and facing a $6-million deficit in its 1992-93 budget.

“If the citizens choose not to vote for this, the City of Inglewood is not going to fold up its tent and go away,” Vincent said. “But the tent may not have a flap on it.”

In Hawthorne, Proposition P asks voters to approve a card club that would be built in the city’s redevelopment area at the north end of town, near the intersection of Imperial Highway and Hawthorne Boulevard.

Supporters portray the card club question as a choice between progress and stagnation.

“Unless the ordinance is passed, there is no opportunity to improve Hawthorne,” said Mark Young, co-chair of the Hawthorne Economic Improvement Committee, the group formed to run the card club campaign.

The Hawthorne campaign was formed by a group of investors who want to build a card club in the city. They include real estate broker and developer Morton S. Greenberg of Los Angeles, TV star and Hawthorne native Fred Dryer, a doctor and a trio of executives from a Torrance accounting firm. Proponents expect the club to generate about $10 million a year in tax revenues and create about 2,000 jobs.

In both cities, card club opponents cite crime as the No. 1 reason to vote against the clubs, claiming that gambling will bring with it a surge in robberies, drug dealing and prostitution.

“It seems to me they can’t handle the problems they have already,” said Leroy Fisher, a 30-year resident of Inglewood and a leading member of RAGE (Residents Against Gambling Expansion). “They’re only going to increase the crime problems here,” Fisher said.

Shirley Duff, chairwoman of People Against Poker in Hawthorne, said a casino would draw a criminal element to the city and ruin its image. Furthermore, Duff asked, “Who would want to live next to a card club?”

Despite such concerns, Sgt. Gregory Chapin, head of the gambling squad in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said that street crime has not been a problem near card clubs, which have large private security forces.

But a different type of crime is found inside the clubs, he said. “You sometimes have forgeries, some (phony or stolen) credit card situations, some aspects of bookmaking,” he said, adding that extortion and loan-sharking have also been discovered in card clubs.

Opponents question the job and revenue-growth promised by card club promoters. At least one Hawthorne card club supporter shares the skepticism.

“I think it’s a little overstated,” said Dick Obayashi, who owns a billiard parlor in Hawthorne and gave money to the card club campaign. “These numbers they’re throwing out are really at the high end . . . I would say those figures are really four or five years down the road.”

Inglewood’s assistant city manager, Norman Cravens, acknowledges that revenue estimates are little more than educated guesses. In recommending that the council put the card club measure on the ballot, Cravens said the city staff looked at what the most successful clubs in the county generate in municipal revenues and figured $10 million was a logical sum for the Hollywood Park club.

Inglewood’s card club ordinance does not specify how much the city will tax card club income. The council decided to await the results of the election before setting a rate. Hawthorne, on the other hand, has spelled out a formula under which the city would take from 10% to 14.4% of the club’s gross revenues depending on the level of those revenues.

Opponents, particularly in Inglewood, are also questioning what kind of jobs will be created by card clubs, an issue that has sparked charges of racism in that city. In its advertising, RAGE has charged that Hollywood Park will not give the few high-paying card club jobs to minorities who live in the city.

“All these owners, they’re outsiders,” said Inglewood resident Eugene Talbert, a retired teacher. “The people in Inglewood would be hired to clean up the floors,” he said.

Hollywood Park campaign representatives reject the charge. And Mayor Vincent said he will “personally” see to it that people from Inglewood are hired into top jobs at the card club.

Regardless of whether job and tax revenue estimates are inflated, gambling proponents could hardly have chosen a better time to peddle card clubs as municipal revenue raisers.

For South Bay cities, the misery index is about as high as it gets, with the defense industry laying off thousands of workers, unemployment in Los Angeles County close to 11%, the state budget deficit taking an ever-larger share of local tax revenues and a recession that is causing city sales tax revenues to drop.

Also, April’s civil unrest left economic scars on both Hawthorne and Inglewood, which lost businesses to the rioting and looting and saw their reputations as safe communities called into question.

As an alternative to the card clubs, the Hawthorne City Council has put another measure on the ballot to replenish city coffers. If adopted, the measure would double the city’s utility tax, from 3.5% to 7%, raising an additional $3 million a year.

Card club supporters in both Inglewood and Hawthorne say they are confident their clubs would be successful. However, the economics of card clubs can vary according to the wealth of cities surrounding them, the size and location of the clubs and the business acumen of the owners.

Huntington Park received $251,000 in tax revenues last year from the single card club located there, while Bell Gardens reaped a whopping $10.8 million from the giant Bicycle Club. Tax revenues from the Bicycle Club represented 65% of all revenues flowing into Bell Gardens’ general fund last year, said David Bass, the city’s finance director.

In Commerce--home to one of the largest casinos in the state, with 170 tables--gambling tax revenues to the city last year totaled $10.2 million. Gardena, on the other hand, has two card clubs that together generated slightly under $5 million in gambling tax revenues in fiscal 1991-92.

The only South Bay city now allowing card clubs, Gardena once had six. Since the 1930s, small family card clubs that typified gambling in California began giving way to large, multimillion-dollar enterprises like those in Bell Gardens and Commerce.

Those large clubs began to boom in the mid-1980s when California casino owners tapped into the growing Asian gambling market, introducing Asian games such as pai gow, said Chapin, the Sheriff Department’s gambling expert.

Some cities have discovered that from a tax revenue standpoint, card clubs are not a sure bet.

Consider Bell, which had to cut close to $1 million out of its budget when the only card club in town suddenly closed its doors in August. The club had been generating almost that much in tax revenues, but when the owner failed to renew his license and then disappeared without a trace, the city lost out.

“Card clubs may have made Bell Gardens and Commerce rich but (they didn’t make) Bell rich,” said John Bramble, Bell’s city administrator.

Mayor Vincent and other Inglewood officials appear convinced that the owners of Hollywood Park can operate a successful business, in part because the track is well-known and has drawn crowds for 54 years.

The proof, they say, is that other club owners, namely George Hardie of the Bicycle Club, are pouring money into the campaign against both Hollywood Park and the proposed Hawthorne club.

Hardie acknowledges he is financing the campaigns in both cities against new card clubs. There is not enough room in the county for more clubs, he insists.

“Where are all the players going to come from?” Hardie asked.

Inside the Card Clubs Card clubs are not like Las Vegas casinos, where players bet against the house. Instead, card club players bet against each other. And the clubs, which are not allowed to have such devices as roulette wheels and slot machines, make money by charging seat rental fees, a fee for each hand played or both.

Until the mid-’80s, traditional poker games such as draw, low ball, high-low, stud and hold-’em were the standard fare of California card parlors as the small, family-owned clubs were sometimes called.

Today, however, California card clubs cater to a huge Asian clientele that has turned the clubs into large business enterprises with the air of Las Vegas casinos, with two or three restaurants and in some cases showrooms with live

entertainment.

The game that changed the face of California gambling is pai gow, a complicated, ancient Chinese game played with domino-like tiles. Played with an intensity unknown to Westerners, pai gow is filled with mysticism and symbolism, which make it seem as much a spiritual experience as a game of chance.

Because pai gow is so complicated, California card casinos often invent their own simpler versions, giving them such names as Asian poker, Asian super pan and pai gow poker.

Largely on the strength of the boom in Asian games, The Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens and The California Commerce Club in Commerce now each do about $100 million worth of business a year, gaming experts say.

Who’s Financing the Card Club Fight Cash contributions reported through Oct. 28:

INGLEWOOD

Yes on Proposition E

Hollywood Park Operating Co. $361,786

TOTAL $361,786

No on Proposition E

Bicycle Club Casino $53,500

California Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protection Assn.

(jockey and horse owner PAC) $29,000

Californians For Fair Business Practices (gambling employee PAC) 10,000

Russmar Investment Corp. (owner of Normandie Club in Gardena) $10,000

Jim Demaegt (attorney) $100

Contributions of less than $100 not itemized $298

TOTAL $102,943

HAWTHORNE

Yes on Proposition P

Morton S. Greenberg (real estate developer) $53,750

John Berberian (grocery store owner) $20,000

Jack Berberian (grocery store owner) $20,000

Marc Mittleman (podiatrist) $20,000

John M. Tsao (physician) $20,000

Roy Ishii (CPA) $20,000

Gerald M. Werksman (attorney) $10,000

Olivia Robbins (real estate investor, Florida) $10,000

Barbara Klive (supermarket receiving clerk) $10,000

J. J. Chudacoff (retiree) $10,000

Lorraine Greenband (homemaker) $10,000

Alexander T. Alvarez (accountant) $10,000

Dana N. Piazza (accountant) $10,000

William L. O’Bryan (attorney) $5,000

Dick Obayashi (billiard parlor owner) $1,000

Contributions of less than $100 (not itemized) $60

TOTAL $229,810

No on Proposition P

Californians For Fair Business Practices (casino PAC) $12,500

Russmar Investment

(same address as Normandie Casino, Gardena) $10,000

Bicycle Club (casino) $8,500

Olin Lambert (retiree) $800

Del Aire Assembly of God (Christian organization) $101

Albert Wise (pastor, Del Aire Assembly of God) $100

Mark E. Schoenfeld (catering company owner) $100

John D. Andersen (Hawthorne school trustee) $99

Ginny Lambert (former city councilwoman) $53

Sisters of Providence (Catholic convent) $50

Christa Metzger (superintendent, Hawthorne School District $50

Michael Escalante (Centinela Valley school trustee) $50

Cecil Clark (retiree) $50

William Clark (telephone employee) $50

Sisters of Charity (Catholic convent) $25

Daniel Dorsey (Northrup engineer) $20

Contributions of less than $100 (not itemized) $21

TOTAL $32,569

SOURCE: Campaign finance reports and city clerks

Stacking the Deck Los Angeles County has five card clubs. That number could increase to seven after Tuesday, when Inglewood and Hawthorne voters are scheduled to decide whether to allow card clubs in their communities.