Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

If you want to see an ex ample of how quickly this region can change, look at the articles on this page about gambling. Staff writer Tom Dochat explains that the approval process for lucrative gaming licenses is hotter than the handle of a 25-cent one-armed bandit on a Saturday night. Teams of state investigators have been traveling worldwide to make sure that the people seeking licenses are as squeaky clean as possible. So much money will be involved that you have to hope these regulators will be watched closely, too. In other words, the watchdogs will need watchdogs. Another story is about how Penn National Gaming's operations in Mississippi weathered one of the worst hurricane seasons in U.S. history. The company's casinos have been rebuilt and most of the staff is back at work. Part of that rapid response was made possible by Mississippi officials who changed laws to make gambling even more lucrative in the state. Nothing like a natural disaster that cripples your economy to shake out some business-friendly laws. In Mississippi's case, gambling had been limited to casinos on the water. Now it is possible to have them on land. As we also learned last week about West Virginia, officials there are expecting their own tidal wave of sorts, which is why they might expand that state's gambling laws so they don't lose too many customers to Pennsylvania. Penn National intends to have slot machines at its racetrack in Grantville and is betting that it gets approvals this week, having already demolished old buildings to make way for new ones.

If they could go into a hurricane-ravaged area -- where everyone was looking for contractors and virtually all locals were sleeping in trailers for months -- and rebuild a casino in less than a year, imagine how quickly the landscape could change around here.

Assuming the company gets its conditional license this week, it expects to be open by 2008. That's just over a year from now.

I like talking with people about what gambling will mean to this region. Some people have been seeing opportunities for a while -- we reported nearly two years ago about land speculation around Grantville. Others see the potential for crime, drugs and other problems that follow dreams of easy money.

For years, there has been talk about hotels near the state Farm Show Complex off Cameron Street and Interstate 81. I'm not sure that expos, craft fairs and special events make such ventures a sure thing. But if you have a casino a few exits down the interstate, you might not have many worries about booking rooms.

I don't know if gambling will be good for this area or awful. I do know that once a license is approved for a casino in Grantville, the region will be transformed.