Stakes Are High as Residents Split on Card Club at Los Alamitos Track : Gambling: Cypress voters will decide in the June election whether to allow Orange County’s first such gaming house.

In the first test of Orange County’s tolerance of large-scale gambling, Cypress voters will go to the polls in June to decide whether to allow a card club at the Los Alamitos Race Course.

Although gambling has been allowed at the race course in Cypress for the past 40 years--pumping millions of dollars into the city budget to help pay for police salaries, rodent control and other city services--this is different.

With the ink barely dry on the City Council’s approval to put the “Cypress Club” proposal before voters June 8, the community is gearing up for a massive showdown.

In some neighborhoods, meetings are under way as residents plot strategies to keep the card club out of Cypress. In other areas, residents are preparing to blanket the community with a gambling education program, arguing that an informed voter is their best ally.

Also expected to enter the fray are competing club operators who, when challenged in other cities, came out fighting with their checkbooks. Card club operators already have approached Garden Grove officials to sell them on allowing a gambling house--to beat the potential new competition in Cypress.

Competition for gaming dollars in the region has grown intense in recent years. Three card clubs already operate in the Southeast area, all within half an hour’s drive of the proposed Cypress casino.

The Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens generated close to $11 million for the city in fiscal 1991-92, and the Commerce Casino in the City of Commerce raked in $10.2 million in revenues for the city. The Huntington Park Casino generated $280,000 for that city. Besides those clubs already operating, card parlors have been approved in Compton and at Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood. Proposals for three more clubs are on the June ballot in West Hollywood, Pico Rivera and Lynwood.

The increased competition is troubling to both the owners of established clubs as well as those proposing clubs.

George Hardie, owner and operator of the Bicycle Club, said there aren’t enough players to fill more clubs.

“I don’t know why those people think they are going to open the doors and there is going to be some new players,” Hardie said. “There is just so much to go around.”

Hardie, who is known for his aggressive campaigns against potential competition, helped finance a losing fight in November against the card club proposal for Hollywood Park. He said he has not been involved in Cypress but didn’t rule out the possibility of offering financial aid to opponents of the Cyress proposal.

“I haven’t been involved in Cypress yet,” Hardie said. “I don’t know what I will do, but I don’t have any plans right now.”

Claude Booker, who wants to build a casino in Pico Rivera, said the Cypress Club probably wouldn’t have much effect on his plans. Booker said he hopes the Pico Rivera casino will draw from players in the northern San Gabriel Valley.

Still, he said he is keeping his eye on Cypress. “Any time the competition increases, you have to be a little concerned,” he said.

These are not going to be easy days in Cypress. Even before the issue hit the ballot, a mysterious flyer landed in the mailbox of many Cypress residents.

“If you are concerned about property values, crime, churches and children and the family neighborhood--come to the City Council meeting,” reads the pamphlet from the Cypress Voters League, an organization with no traceable members.

Lloyd Arnold, owner of the Los Alamitos track, appeared at a packed City Council meeting in January and offered assurances that Cypress will benefit from a casino.

“We are not here to do something to the city that would hurt it,” he said, while hundreds jammed into the chambers with signs and angry looks. “One of the major benefits we can provide is the money.”

Next came the list of potential benefits--more police officers, a city Fire Department, a 500-seat theater, a giant banquet hall and 2,500 jobs.

Each promise hit a direct nerve. Arnold vowed to bring in more police at a time when the city is battling with the Police Department over staffing. He promised to give the city enough money to afford its own Fire Department, months after it was revealed that one of its county-run stations was having trouble getting to its calls. For years, local arts groups have been trying to muster support for a concert venue.

The heart of his proposal is the projected $12 million he has promised every year for city coffers. That money will come from a percentage of the club’s income, to be determined by the City Council later. The offer comes at a time when the city is facing a potential $1-million shortfall in its $17-million budget. It’s a figure that some city officials can’t ignore.

But if anyone can persuade residents in this town of 45,000 that gambling is good, Arnold is the man, according to some city watchers.

Arnold, a rancher from Illinois, came to California in 1975 and operated harness racing in Sacramento for several years. In 1989, he, along with four other businessmen, bought the Los Alamitos Race Course and its surrounding property. Arnold, Chris Bartis and Dr. Edward Allred are proposing the card club.

Four years ago, Arnold arrived in town and brought peace to the community ripped apart by a plan to shut down its only golf course and replace it with a business park. Seen as the great facilitator, he bought the Los Alamitos Race Course from floundering Hollywood Park and negotiated a deal with the city that saved the golf course and gave him a business park, albeit a smaller one.

Times Staff Writer Jill Gottesman contributed to this report.