Detroit Officials Get Plenty of Advice at Las Vegas Gaming Summit

Thursday, Dec. 5, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

With Detroit poised to become the largest North American city with casino gambling, industry officials attending the conference in Las Vegas urged that the city act both boldly and carefully.

"Detroit is a market big enough that the major developers are certainly salivating," Roger Gros, senior editor of Casino Journal, told The Detroit News in a report published Thursday. "Detroit should work toward getting the deep-pocket casino corporations, the very best of the industry."

Michigan voters on Nov. 5 authorized up to three gambling casinos in Detroit. City officials since then have visited Atlantic City, N.J., and Las Vegas to glean information from industry and local government officials.

"What I say to Detroit is this: Try to learn as much as you can about what went wrong in Louisiana," said Jason Ader, a senior analyst with Bear Stearns, a major investment banking firm for casinos.

"The restrictions there - no restaurants, no hotel rooms, no amenities - that's where the regulators created problems," Ader said of New Orleans' checkered experience with casinos.

Although Michigan investors helped the casino referendum pass, Detroit shouldn't necessarily favor them, Lansing attorneys David Waddell and Robert Stocker told summit participants Wednesday.

"It should be who has the best proposal, not who's grandfathered in," the Detroit Free Press quoted Waddell as saying.

Casino developers must have ambitious ideas, enough money to overcome potential problems and the ability to borrow at relatively low cost, Stocker said.

"People think all you have to do is put up a building, put slots in it and people will come in droves, but several casinos have failed," he said.

Waddell and Stocker told the Free Press before their session that they represent a major national gambling firm interested in Detroit, but would not identify it.