I'd say the hard-hitting, well-research journalism evident in that article is pretty much summed up by the fact that in two subsequent paragraphs, they tell us the same factoid (that the Gallery was the nation's first enclosed urban shopping mall) twice.

Dan, you are so wrong about this. The article is totally fair and balanced.

On the one hand, it left out all the evidence of casinos saving a commercial district.

On the other, it left out all the evidence of casinos killing a commercial district.

The article could have talked about the negative experience of Atlantic City and Detroit. It could have mentioned the research that shows that casinos redirect spending from other forms of entertainment to gambling but don't add to the economy. It could have mentioned that spending on slots parlors owned by large corporations is likely to have a much lower multiplier effect than spending on local businesses.

But it didn't.

See, fair and balanced

10-11 a.m.: Gallery Casino discussion on WHYY Radio Times: Guests include Terry Gillen, Mayor's Economic Advisor; Michael Thomas, chair, Foxwoods; and John Chin, president, Phila. Chinatown Development Corp. which has not taken a stand on the casino. Call in number: 1-888-477-WHYY (1-888-477-9499)

Mayor Nutter has declared that the city is facing almost 1/2 BILLION dollars in financing shortfall thanks to receipts from the BPT not coming in anywhere near expected [even with the decreases factored in].

Someone is going to have to budge or the City of Philadelphia will be forced to declare Bankruptcy if it cannot start selling assets to cover the shortfall. The City's RDA is sitting on a boatload of undeveloped land and property that it can't even sell now thanks to the housing market. So where are the tax receipts going to come from?

Philadelphia again lost more taxpayers with the last census update--so do we raise the Wage Tax to 7% and double the BPT so we can keep the pension fund solvent?

I think the writing is on the wall. The casinos are going to have to be built SOMEWHERE. It is either that, or Philadelphia will file for bankruptcy protection so that the city's pension fund will be taken off the books and placed into receivership under ERISA.

We might have to engage in real city planning. We might have to look at progressive taxation. We might have to look at ways our city is underspending on social services but overspending on corporate bailouts (tax abatement, anyone?).

Or we can build casinos. Because something that taxes our city for us, and creates bankruptcy with our people, is a great stabilizer for Philly's unstable economic situation.

Retail alone won't reinvigorate the corridor. But gambling is essentially a form of retail - one that doesn't play well other businesses. The whole point of modern casinos is turn inward, make you forget what time it is, to lose yourself in pulling the lever over and over again. In as much as dining and entertainment options are included in the package, its to keep the customer and their dollars inside the casino. So even say when they build an entertainment venue as part of the plan its subsidized in part by the slot machines both in operation and promotion - often to the point where it drowns out any other independent options in the area.

The other big deal in gambling these days for the often older folks who go to these places is comps.Just like at the grocery store or Barnes and Nobles book barn, customer loyalty is encouraged by giving you a card that keeps track of the ammount you gamble so you slowly "earn" a very small percentage of your gambling losses back - typically in meal credits for the restaurant already inside the casino. Again to keep any dollars associated with the trip to the casino inside the casino.

I used to work with a somewhat older guy who loved to go AC and for him the subject of comp systems was the most important aspect of where he decided to spend his slots dollar. He could debate endlessly the merits of the various systems and this was a major part of his choice of which casino he went to.

So yes the article is right retail alone won't do it - but casino's are a particularly anti-mom and pops kind of retail - and the worst possible "solution" for Market East. The right solution is mixing in some higher-end residential upstairs which in turn would bring its own built in shopping demographic, which in turn would encourage other retailers to overcome their biases both rational and unrational against the Gallery's existing customer base. Very nearby residential diversifies the customer base, which draws a more varied mix of retailers, which in turn convinces shoppers that the Gallery has a wider range of stuff, which in turn builds and diversifies the customer base and stores yet again in a self-sustaining cycle.

Large floor gambling on the other hand has a tendency to negatively impact surrounding retail, to so dominate the local market it sucks the life out of surrounding mom and pop's that can't compete. The exact opposite of what adding just a small amount higher density upscale residential to the Market East corridor would do.

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

someone should ask are these:

What are the practical alternatives to Foxwoods' building a slots parlor at The Gallery or at the site on the Delaware?

What exactly is the plan to get the city to achieve those alternatives?

Having taken a breather from this topic over the weekend (and by breather I mean I wrote new literature for the Philly Against McCain canvass and then canvassed South Philly both days; it went well, btw) and having made some reality-check phone calls regarding Nutter's negotiating position with Ron Rubin and Neil Bluhm -- who, as representatives of the two groups of casino investors, have final say over this whole thing, not you, not me, not City Hall, not even Harrisburg, as the absurd law is written -- I am still where I was on Friday: wondering how the mayor can convince Rubin and Bluhm to build anywhere they don't want to.

How Nutter got Rubin to consider The Gallery is obvious. Rubin owns it, it's an existing structure (so he might not need to spend as much money to open a slots barn soon), and he might make more money there, since to many (I won't say most, but I suspect most) objective observers a downtown slots parlor makes more sense than does a Delaware waterfront one.

How Nutter can get Rubin and Bluhm to wait and consider anywhere else is more than an open question, it is a pressing matter. All of the people I know who have expressed an opinion that Nutter has the power to get Rubin and/or Bluhm to agree to build at the airport, or the stadium complex (another better alternative to the present sites, I think), or anywhere else, seem to have posted here already.

Thus far, I've not heard from anyone a persuasive argument for how Nutter and the city can achieve this. I would love to hear one. I really would. But it would need to be, for me, believable. I've spent many hours studying this subject, and I've heard arguments before with which I was totally in agreement in principle, but that I could not support as policy becaue they could not pass the smell test for how they would be accomplished.

The good people at CFP have been working for three years to prevent casinos opening in Philadelphia at all, and while I have always approved of that goal -- just as I approve of the goal of single-payer universal healthcare -- I don't see how they can achieve it at this moment; as I've noted earlier, the two Philadelphia casinos represent tax revenue to Harrisburg and that revenue is already budgeted, even to a certain extent is already spent; so I have actively supported as policy achieving what I consider a next-best alternative, to re-site the casinos.

Re-siting seems to me incredibly difficult given the law but possible. If you find a site where investors think they'll make money than on the river, it might be achievable.

Sometimes people on the Left find themselves in the position we found ourselves in swing states in 2000, in fact I now call this position a 2000 Choice: facing the choice between a then mushy-in-the-middle Al Gore, an unacceptable George Bush, and Ralph Nader. Nader is who we really agree with most, so he's who we should have supported, right?

But when -- and if -- the outcome matters to you, it's worth knowing if the person or position you're backing has a chance of winning. For some Nader voters in 2000, Bush and Gore were the same, so it didn't matter. But for some people on the Left, Gore, ugly and un-inspiring as he was, would in the end have been preferable to Bush; supporting the then-seemingly doctrinally-pure Nader seemed right at the time, but in retrospect seems wrong.

It could be that in the casino matter, The Gallery is Gore, the Delaware Foxwoods site (for many) is Bush, and the all of the alternatives are variations on Nader.

I'm not yet saying we're presently facing a 2000 Choice on the Foxwoods matter: we don't yet know if any third party candidates out there are viable. I hope they are. I hope somebody knows how to talk Neil Bluhm (and if there is a site that is better than The Gallery) Ron Rubin into building there. I also hope that nothing gets built anywhere, either on Market Street or anywhere else, without good, sound -- and most importantly -- inclusive planning. I argued for the Penn Praxis plan for the Delaware, and I will argue for a plan for East Market, just as well. The neighbors deserve it. The city deserves it.

But we deserve single-payer universal healhtcare too.

Because I think Nutter is negotiating with almost no cards in his hand, I don't know how he can get Bluhm and Rubin to wait for studies. I'm not sure why they would not simply become impatient and start building on the Delaware.

In which case, for some of us, Bush will have won again.

We are never, ever, in a million years going to see The Gallery turn into a shopping destination like the Fashion Show mall in Vegas or the opulent shopping colonnade like the Westfield Center in San Francisco, which combines retail and dining with mass transit.

1) Philadelphia has a toxic business environment. Businesses which operate on slim margins (<3%) cannot survive in the city without extracting tax breaks.

2) The architecture at The Gallery is dismal... I wouldn't even consider it to be tasteful Brutalism on the outside. The exterior walls would have to be removed and replaced to update the structure to make it inviting to pedestrians

3) Still after all these years... we have a massive dead space at the Disneyhole and even during the greatest bull market run ever seen and a real estate bubble... nobody wanted this lot for anything other than surface parking... speaks volumes.

If we are going to keep giving out tax breaks to lure companies into town or to keep existing ones from leaving... why bother to continue to tax if special people always get exempted? That seems grossly unfair, undemocratic and unequal.

The "bad architecture" argument is tremendously oversold. Does anyone actually think KofP is an attractive structure? How about Deptford? Besides the plan as I understand it is to get the slot machines up and running ASAP using the existing architectural framework of the mall and possibly to later put a bigger casino directly on top of the Gallery as is "Brutalist" architecture or no. The architecture of the Gallery won't be changing anyway so if you were right the innate ugliness of the building would kill the casino's success anyway.

The core questions remain: a.) whether a slot parlor which studies have shown appeals basically to an older, driving prefering, often suburban demographic will have positive "spill over effect" to the other retail in the Gallery? b.) whether said population will take public transit under any circumstances considering they sure don't take it in sizable numbers to games at the Sports Complex? c.) that the casino will actually hurt adding in residential which the real key to adding "afterhours" economic viatility to the Market East corridot?

On a.) I think casinos are by design intended to capture and keep all and ever dollar that walks through their door - they suck the air out of surrounding businesses, not help them. On b.) the answer as I recall from Mayor Street's commission was basically "No" - it doesn't matter how great the public transpo is. casino patrons basically drive. On c.) I strongly suspect that besides an increase in panhandlers the after hours economic benefit in term sof traffic to the Gallery and surrounding area will be minimal. How much positive impact has downtown Chester from their very busy slot parlor in the almost two years the have been open? Not much.

Without a casino the best solution to achieve the round the clock addition of economic activity is to put more residential on top the Gallery. With the addition of a casino such residential would play an important role of a population whose vested interest would to be to keep tabs on the casino operators keeping their promises to the surrounding communities in terms of negative impacts.

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

First, Detroit's downtown is nowhere near as successful anywhere as Philadelphia's is everywhere. The downtown area has next to no residential properties and virtually no retail. The foot traffic is mostly generated by people who work in the government and commercial buildings and hotels, which is why the most thriving part of Detroit, Greektown, is largely restaurants. You can get a decent sized crowd in the nearby bars for football, baseball, and hockey games, or when people come to Fox Theater, but it's almost all car commuting. Detroit is and was a rotten analogy for Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has colleges, telecomm, Pharma, and (especially) the Liberty Bell. It will never be in the shape Detroit is in.

That said, it is worth noting that the "downtown" casino in Greektown has tried to move out of downtown (since it's hard to park, it's hard to get to) and has filed for bankrupty. The most successful casino, the MGM Grand, is a considerable distance from the downtown proper, near the bus terminal, and is paired with a luxury hotel. The best analogy I can think of is if you were to place a casino at the naval yard. Motor City casino is even farther removed, on the other side of the Lodge Freeway. (Think Camden.)

However, other than the casino, Detroit has no real tourist attractions. I think the intent of the casino at Market East is to effectively create a tourist district stretching along Market Street from the Convention Center to Penn's Landing. Philadelphia has to solve a problem that Detroit has never had, which is how to accomodate the interests of 1) nearby residential neighborhoods and 2) dedicated local shoppers (people stopped coming downtown to shop in Detroit about thirty years ago).

I think we also need to consider the seasonal effects on the district. Obviously, people live in Philadelphia's nearby neighborhoods year-round, while Liberty Bell tourism (presumably) peaks in summer and drops off in winter. Riverfront tourism and perhaps shopping at the Gallery probably do the same. Convention traffic may be smoother year round (I know I wind up going to a lot of ridiculous academic conventions in the wintertime).

This really is threading the needle stuff. Again, with years to plan and debate, we might pull it off. ("If only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something!" -- Westley) God damn the legislature for putting us in this position.

Opening the casinos on the Pier basically flushes out most of the panhandlers downtown, which everybody wants to see happen anyway.

That's including the ones who will call you a heartless bastard online for "not caring enough about their plight", et. al.