Bets Ride High as Casino Niagara Opens

Its frontdoor just 100 yards from the U.S. border, Casino Niagara opens today amid expectations that it will rake in more money than any Las Vegas gaming hall.

Predictions of 9,000 new jobs and more visitors to a city already flush with tourism have Canadian officials crowing about the four-story, $118-million casino, created out of a flagging shopping mall.

However, on the U.S. side of the falls, politicians, academics, clergy and business leaders are wary of their new neighbor. Although some anticipate beneficial spinoffs, many are bracing for another blow to a local economy where growth must be detected with a magnifying glass.

“I see these casinos as giant, money-sucking machines,” said the Rev. Patrick Warren, a Presbyterian minister and chairman of a grass-roots group called Citizens Concerned About Casinos in Niagara Falls, N.Y. “Every dollar put in a slot machine is a dollar not spent at a restaurant or a bowling alley.”

There’s little doubt the casino’s biggest winner will be its owner, the Ontario provincial government.

Through its Ontario Casino Corp., the government will collect a 20% tax on upfront earnings, then take all profit beyond expenses and the cut given to Navegante Group, the Las Vegas-based operating company. Navegante’s share will include a percentage of the games and depend on the number of visitors and total casino revenue. Dominic Alfieri, president of Ontario Casino Corp., estimates it will total $4.4 million to $7.4 million the first year.

At least one executive is so confident of Casino Niagara’s success, he’s made a private wager. Navegante President Larry Woolf has told Alfieri that if Casino Niagara fails to equal the gross revenue produced by any single Las Vegas casino, he’ll give Alfieri his expensive wristwatch.

“I don’t expect to be winning that watch,” Alfieri said.

Experts say Alfieri may be right. If Casino Niagara makes as much as predicted, about $480 million a year, it will be on the same scale as Las Vegas resorts such as the MGM Grand Hotel and the Mirage.

Wayne Thomson, mayor of Canada’s Niagara Falls, says the casino is triggering major economic growth.

Casino and construction jobs are plentiful, hotels are expanding and companies are lining up to create new tourist attractions, he said. With tourism becoming a year-round industry, the number of visitors may increase from 12 million to as many as 20 million, he predicted.

Some leaders in Western New York share Thomson’s upbeat outlook. Jo Fisher, president of the Niagara Falls, N.Y., Visitors and Convention Bureau, said the casino would prove a major attraction on both sides of the border. Convention bookings are up to 57 from 41 at this time last year, she noted.

However, 20 miles to the south, Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello is more skeptical. He cites Casino Windsor, which Ontario opened just across from Detroit in 1994. Eighty percent of that casino’s patrons come from the U.S.

“A lot of the money came over the bridge from Detroit to the casino in Windsor, and a lot of the problems went back over the bridge to Detroit,” Masiello said. Academics who have studied other casinos say Masiello’s fears are well-founded.

Ontario officials expect two-thirds of Casino Niagara’s customers to come from the U.S., many drawn from the 2 million people in Western New York, 1 million within an hour’s drive. Most of the Canadian clientele will come from the corridor between Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Among North American casinos, only Nevada’s pull in a significant number of gamblers from outside the region, said Robert Goodman, an industry expert who wrote an analysis of state-sponsored gambling called “The Luck Business.”

All other casinos offer what is known as “convenience gambling,” a chance to bet within a day’s drive of home, said Goodman, an urban planning professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

The contrasting Canadian optimism and American fears are neatly summed up on a new T-shirt offered at a duty-free shop across the street from Casino Niagara. The shirt reads: “Life is simple. Eat. Sleep. Gamble.” It is decorated with dice, cards and dollar bills--U.S. dollar bills.