Because Boston's mayor is advocating for a Beantown casino,
The Boston Globe takes a long, hard look at the pluses and minuses of Detroit's casinos. Good? jobs and tax revenue and hotel rooms. Bad? Compulsive gambling.
Excerpt:
The casinos, catering to high rollers and working folks, have added
nearly 7,000 jobs, which average $54,532 in annual wages, tips, and
benefits, according to figures compiled by the American Gaming
Association, a Washington-based gaming advocacy organization.
Last
year they brought in $1.3 billion in revenue, of which 12.1 percent, or
$158 million, went to the state of Michigan and 11.9 percent, or $155
million, to the city of Detroit.
The city has built more hotels
in the past five years than in the previous 25 years, according to city
officials, diversifying the tax base and turning the Motor City into
the fifth highest-grossing casino market, falling just behind
Connecticut.
"People thought Sodom and Gomorrah," said Matt
Allen, spokesman for Detroit's mayor, Kwame M. Kilpatrick. "But none of
that has happened. There's a synergy here. You can feel it, and you can
see it. We don't really see any downside."
Read the entire article
here.
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