Charities Hope Bingo Venture Yields Payoff : Fund raising: Officials see the games as a source of income for community groups. But low turnouts so far could mean disappointment is in the cards.
As Lynn Jenkins moves among the forest of wood-grain metal tables in the ballroom of Compton’s Ramada Hotel, he is anything but a former aerospace manager. He’s a lucky charm. He’s a jinx. And the bingo players greedily eye the sheaf of playing sheets in his hand.
“This one a winner?” a player mutters as Jenkins hands over a sheet and collects a dollar.
The question is being asked of the bingo parlor itself in this city. Will bingo be a winner--or just a costly disappointment like others visited upon this city in recent years?
The games have a lot of promises to live up to. They are organized by a new nonprofit organization, the Community Foundation for Social Services, which has pledged its profits, estimated at $2.5 million annually, to scholarship funds and community charity organizations. Of that, 75% would go to Compton organizations and the rest to outside charities.
“We’re doing this for the community. It will be very nice bingo and give a lot of money for charities,” said Mikael Aloyan, who is also general manager of Murcole Industries, the city’s rubbish contractor.
Aloyan said the bingo games, run entirely by volunteers who can make $100 a night in tips, can gross $10 million a year.
Aloyan also agreed to pay $45,500 a month to rent the ballroom of the city-managed Ramada Hotel, a cash infusion that will shore up the finances of the struggling business, Assistant City Manager John Johnson said.
The Ramada, like the near-defunct Auto Mall, was opened with great hopes only to falter as developers defaulted on city loans. City leaders now look to low-risk bingo as a new source of pride and income.
“It’s good,” Mayor Omar Bradley said. “It’s paying bills at the hotel, and as long as we can keep it under control, it will be OK.”
In addition to ballroom rent and cash for charities, the foundation will pay 1% of gross revenues to the city as state law mandates. If the bingo operation grosses $10 million as planned, $100,000 a year would go to the city.
More than half of that extra $100,000 will not make its way into city coffers, however. The council voted 4 to 1 on Sept. 21 to create a Gaming Commission to oversee bingo and a planned card casino. Made up entirely of council members, the Gaming Commission will meet four times a month, 11 months a year and receive $250 a meeting. Total paid to commissioners, annually, will be $55,000.
Yvonne Arceneaux, the lone vote against forming the commission, said the oversight committee should have been made up of gambling experts.
“Still, I really hope that (bingo) does what it’s supposed to do. There are a lot of promises,” Arceneaux said.
In the long, high-ceilinged ballroom of the Ramada, dozens of volunteers like Jenkins also hope that bingo will be a success. Besides the promise of millions in charitable contributions, the games provide income for those who sell bingo playing sheets.
Whenever a player wins, the lucky one is expected to tip both the bingo caller and the person who sold the winning sheet. Tips were slow in the beginning, Jenkins said, maybe adding up to only $25 a night. Now, he can expect $50 and he hopes for more.
“A good paper seller should be able to make $100 a night in tips,” said Jenkins, 49, who has volunteered every night since the bingo parlor opened, selling paper from 6 p.m. to midnight Monday through Saturday, and 2 to 8 p.m. Sundays. “I’ve got my favorite players here now, the ones who show up every single night and know how to tip.”
Every night that bingo is played--seven nights a week, unless the ballroom is booked on Saturday during a convention--Aloyan needs 30 volunteers, he said. Some come for the socializing or the exercise of walking through the long rows of tables.
“I don’t have time to walk around at work,” said Lana Kazarian. “So it’s nice here. And I’m in favor of whatever it is they’re working for.”
Some volunteers came from local churches and organizations that hope to benefit from bingo profits someday. Or they came from as far away as Glendale, where they were recruited from an Armenian church, said volunteer Gegam Yesayan, a North Hollywood cabinetmaker by day.
Aloyan, who attends the First Charity Missionary Baptist Church in Compton, said many volunteers who came from outside the city are friends of his and Rouben Kandilian. Both are of Armenian descent.
Kandilian is owner of Compton Entertainment Inc., the company preparing to build the city’s card casino. Compton Entertainment put up the $200,000 to start bingo in the Ramada. About $10,000 of that initial investment was put into the monitors, computers, caller’s platform and box of bouncing bingo balls that now dominate the ballroom.
“We’re planting seeds here in the community. We’re here to stay,” Kandilian said.
Kandilian is one of 21 members of the foundation’s board of directors. The board will decide how the charitable contributions are distributed, but the City Council will have the final say, according to the ordinance.
Exactly how much money will be available for charities remains unclear. The first three weeks of bingo have been slow. Although the ballroom can hold up to 500 players, the count has only reached as high as 300 lately, Aloyan said.
On Monday, bingo brought in $18,000 before overhead, just half the amount Aloyan needs to make his nightly goal.
“At first it’s hard because you have to build customers,” Aloyan said. “It’s word-of-mouth. Other bingo players still have to hear what a nice facility we have here.”
Some players already have heard Compton’s hotel ballroom is a nice place to spend their nights, and their money.
“I used to play in Hawaiian Gardens, but this is nicer,” said Rosie Gentry, setting out her neatly clipped dollar bills and markers. “It’s less smoky.”
