Placing Its Bets on a Parkway

A decade of feuding and lawsuits may have ended here Friday as this struggling mountain town celebrated the coming of a highway that it fully expects will be a road to riches.

Hundreds of residents, champagne glasses in hand, poured into the streets as the ribbon was cut on the four-lane, eight-mile Central City Parkway. They hope it will bring gamblers right to their doorstep, bypassing neighboring Black Hawk.”It’s been so long, we’re actually looking forward to congestion,” Mayor Buddy Schmaltz said. “I hope every parking spot is full, every day.”

Tom Kerr, a Black Hawk alderman, adjusted his cowboy hat and gazed at the spectacle. He insisted the distrust between the two towns was fading, but couldn’t resist a small dig. “A lot of their wounds were self-inflicted,” he said. “They need to build a product that will attract people.”

Black Hawk and Central City -- about 40 miles west of Denver -- may share a border, but they are divided by more than a century of hostility.

A former mill town, Black Hawk was always the poor cousin of cosmopolitan Central City, with its opera and grand old buildings. But in 1991, when gambling was legalized in both hamlets, the tables turned.

Black Hawk erected enormous casinos with vast parking lots. Central City, eager to protect its historic architecture, built smaller; parking remained almost nonexistent.

Still, it was a road that determined their fortunes -- or lack thereof.

Gamblers driving up twisting Clear Creek Canyon, the only decent way into either town, encountered Black Hawk first. They usually stopped.

Most of Central City’s casinos, which once numbered 30, failed while Black Hawk’s flourished. The town of roughly 160 people became wealthy, with its 22 casinos pulling in $41 million a month.

Central City, population 500, dropped to five casinos and struggled for survival. So local leaders launched an ambitious effort to build a road that would bring people to town without going through Black Hawk. Others believed the rough mountain terrain -- both towns sit at 8,000 feet above sea level -- would make the undertaking too difficult.

“Everyone talks about location, location, location. But it’s tough to actually change a location,” said Schmaltz, who owns a pub in Central City.

Black Hawk tried to thwart the plan by buying land in the path of the proposed road. But that strategy came to a grinding halt when a Denver grand jury said that Black Hawk officials had misspent taxpayer money and abused their authority.

Central City then sued its neighbor for $100 million; Black Hawk countersued. Meanwhile, Central City got a loan to pay for the $38-million road.

“Nobody ever thought we would get financing; they didn’t believe the road would get built,” said Joe Behm, chairman of the Central City Business Improvement District, which arranged the loan. “They didn’t think the contractor would stay with the road because it’s so difficult.”

It was not just finished; it was finished three months early.

Central City officials were eager to celebrate. They assembled a team of race car drivers to see how fast they could go from Interstate 70 to Central City before the highway’s opening ceremony on Friday. Buddy Lazier, a former Indianapolis 500 winner, did it in three minutes at 155 mph.

About 400 people sampled shrimp cocktail, sandwiches, wine and numerous bottles of champagne while waiting for the flashy cars to arrive. An opera singer belted out songs in Italian. The mayor hobnobbed in tails and a baseball hat.

As the cars rumbled in, Behm took the stage. “What do you think of our new road?” he yelled.

Wild cheers went up.

Central City plans to open two casinos next year, as well as build parking lots. But Schmaltz cautioned, “it won’t change our lives overnight.”

Some Black Hawk residents who showed up for the festivities said the era of bad feelings largely was over. They pointed out that the road would also bring customers to their casinos -- and they didn’t have to pay for it.

“It will benefit the community as a whole,” said Craig Ramirez, general manager of the Red Dolly Casino in Black Hawk. “The relationship between our two towns is healing. We have started working together.”