In July of 2018, Hard Rock International announced that it was planning to build its new land-based casino, a $300 million project, in Indiana’s premier Rust Belt City – Gary. The new 40-acre casino will eventually house up to 2764 gaming positions, as well as a 200+ room hotel, a Hard Rock Café, a Hard Rock Live Concert Venue, and several more restaurants and bars.
Local politicians are excited for what the new casino might have to offer to the region’s economy. Construction of the massive project is expected to create nearly 1000 construction jobs, and the finished casino is anticipated to create 2000 new jobs. Gary’s former Mayor, Karen Freeman-Wilson, expressed her enthusiasm for the project, saying that
“…Hard Rock International is indeed transforming gaming in Gary and Northwest Indiana, but more importantly, the Hard Rock supports the economic development vision for our City, the Region, and Buffington Harbor.”
–Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson
Construction officially began on 9 January 2020. City administrators are hopeful that the casino will provide a much-needed new form of tax revenue for the city’s budget. Many also anticipate that the new casino will bring new attention to the city, attracting tourists and visitors from the surrounding region.
Unfortunately for the residents of Gary, the precedent left by casinos elsewhere is not on their side. Historically, casinos were illegal in almost every state except for Nevada’s infamous Las Vegas. That is, until 1978, when New Jersey passed legislation allowing casinos to be built in Atlantic City in a last-ditch effort to revitalize the city’s declining economy and cultural importance. Today, eighteen states have legalized commercial casinos, and thirty states offer legalized gambling of any kind – both commercial and tribal. However, many cities have begun realizing far too late that the long-term affect of casinos is rarely promising – to see exactly what I mean, one has to look no further than Atlantic City itself.
After Atlantic City’s Resorts Casino Hotel became the city’s first casino, city’s residents were hopeful that the casinos would bring tourists, tax revenue, and economic revival, just as Gary residents hope for the Hard Rock Casino.
Eleven more casinos followed, and the tourists came, as did the taxes. But undintended byproducts also followed – vices. Alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, organized crime, gambling addictions. Despite the new source of taxes, casinos come with a massive social cost. Drug use skyrocketed, as did violence and public intoxication. Organized crime began sticking their fingers into the pies, running rigged games and taking percentages of the wins. For the first time since the Prohibition Era, Atlantic City became home to mobsters the likes of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, one of the most terrifying mobsters of the 70s and 80s. Fraudsters, thugs, and mafiosos found their calling in Atlantic City casinos, growing the influence of the mob and feeding on the vices of casino patrons.
Forty years later, the streets of Atlantic City act as powerful reminders of the long-term effects casinos can have on a neighborhood. Local businesses have been all-but replaced by cash-for-gold outlets, pawn shops, liquor stores, and 24-hour adult stores. Prostitutes can be found on nearly every corner. Drugs infest the inner city, with City Council President Marty Small referring to Atlantic Ave as “Zombie City.” Drug dealers regularly intimidate the employees and customers of the few remaining small businesses, and the steady stream of alcoholics lead to daily cases of public urination and defecation. Criminals roam the streets, mugging, assaulting, and murdering just feet away from the brightly-lit casinos.
For these reasons, Atlantic City residents have been fleeing the city by the tens of thousands – since the 1960s, the city’s population has decreased by nearly half, a trend that continues to this day.
Another social issue that casinos present is that they target the most vulnerable people in society. Casinos advertise themselves as adult entertainment: flashy lights, high-stakes games, scantily-clad men and women, the chance to “win it all.” In reality, they’re businesses whose entire model is to trick people into giving them all their money.
Thousands of lives are ruined each year by casinos, and yet people still go every day, even people without any money to lose. Why do people do this to themselves? Because of dopamine: the happy hormone. But it is far more than that – it’s addictive.
Dopamine is a Drug, and Gambling feeds it.
The Journal of Behavioral Addictions argued in June of 2013 that people who are depressed and/or live in poverty are twice as likely to have problems with gambling. It’s these especially vulnerable members of society who are more susceptible to spending hours and days spending their money in casinos.
They go to escape their depression, they go for the alcohol and drugs, they go to escape their boredom. Free drinks are given to impair people’s judgment when they’ve been doing well. Free rooms are offered so you can keep gambling all night. Day cares are provided so patrons can enjoy their gambling without having to worry about their children.
Even the nature of gambling and the games themselves are designed to constantly trigger dopamine hits – all to increase the addictiveness of casinos. Triggering dopamine by winning is easy. It’s the ability for casinos to cause near-wins to release dopamine that makes them especially dangerous to vulnerable people. The thought that they’re so close to winning, that maybe if you just put in $20 more, they’ll finally get those five Sevens you’ve been waiting on for ten hours. Enough $20 bills later, and they’re going home completely broke.
The social downfalls caused by casinos radiate off of them like the fallout of a bomb. The Institute for American Values ran a study back in 2013, concluding that people who live within 10 miles of a casino are twice as likely to become addicted to gambling. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of casino revenue does not come from everyday visitors. Casual gamblers, despite making up nearly 80% of every traffic in casinos, provide less than 10% of their annual gambling revenue. The overwhelming majority of casino revenue comes from gambling addicts.
The IAV uncovered that nearly 60% of casino revenue comes from the 2.6% of Americans, nearly ten million people, who the North American Foundation for Gambling Addiction Help reveals are addicted to gambling.
According to the National Association of Realtors, casinos cause neighborhood property values to plummet. Nearby houses are abandoned as addicts lose all their money, the streets become lined with prostitutes and drug dealers, and criminals take to the streets after dark. Local businesses are scared away, and those that do remain often operate simply to feed into the vices – liquor, adult stores, pawn shops, cash-for gold. A depressing and vice-infested neighborhood pops up where a formerly peaceful one once was, all centered around the bright neon lights of a casino.
It is the tragic evil of gambling that casinos will never admit, and desperate city administrators are always too quick to ignore. Casinos hurt communities and people, driving businesses and residents away until the new tax revenue becomes insignificant. Only when city administrators realize that 100% tax revenues that casinos provide are gotten from targeting the most vulnerable and suffering people of their communities will they be able to right the wrongs of subjecting their constituents to the evils of a casino.
Gary is a city that was once known as the “City of the Century.” It was born with the rise of America’s steel industry and grew to become Indiana’s second-largest city by the 1920s. But just as many other Rust Belt cities in the 1960s, Gary experienced a sharp spiral of decline. The U.S. Steel Gary Works, which employed over 30,000 people in 1970, now employs less than 5,000. Its population halved in 30 years, its industry eroded, and businesses packed up shop and moved to Lake County’s other cities. Modern estimates show that nearly one-third of Gary’s homes and buildings are abandoned. The city has been plagued with huge budget deficits, low literacy rates, high crime and murder rates, and a decaying infrastructure for nearly 50 years. Gary’s poverty rate is currently 35.8%, compared to the 14.6% average for the rest of the state.
It is only in the second half of the past decade that Gary is showing real signs of the beginnings of recovery. Marquette Park, one of the most beautiful parts of Gary and the Lake Michigan Lakefront, received a $28 million grant from the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority in 2009. Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson’s administration focused primarily on removing Gary’s swathes of abandoned buildings, opening up new land for use and and bringing a commercial and industrial economy back into the area. Within the past few years, HMD Trucking agreed to move to Gary, Gary Public Library was reopened, a new IU Northwest Arts & Sciences Building was built, and small businesses have begun opening up on Lake Street.
Gary’s current Mayor is Jerome Prince, after being sworn in on 1 January 2020. He has already started his term at a run, declaring his intentions to fight crime and vice, and to promote personal responsibility in the city’s residents.
It is because of Mayor Prince’s intentions that it becomes even more clear that a casino is the last thing that Gary needs. Mayor Prince should let Atlantic City be the perfect reminder of what happens when you allow casinos to take over and destroy a community, and keep casinos and vice out of Gary.
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