Dockside gaming brought changes to Coast

Saturday, Aug. 23, 1997 | 3:53 a.m.

The Diamond Lady and Emerald Lady, replicas of paddle wheel steamboats from the 1800s, cruised into the Biloxi channel late Saturday morning, July 18, 1992.

Two weeks later and five years ago on Aug. 1, 1992, Biloxi Mayor Pete Halat shouted "Laissez Les Bon Temp Rouler!" (Let the good times roll!), snipped a red ribbon, and watched as thousands began boarding the casino boats.

State Sen. Tommy Gollott, D-Biloxi, rolled the first dice. Biloxi Port Commission Chairman Joe Creel dropped the first token into a slot machine.

Gollott crapped out. Creel lost his token.

Legal dockside casino gambling had arrived on the Mississippi Coast.

Today, the coast is in the midst of amazing prosperity, all because of the 11 casinos and hotels on the Mississippi Sound and inland bays from Biloxi to Bay St. Louis.

Coast casinos last year generated $749 million in revenues and $90 million in state, city and county taxes. Commercial building and housing starts have skyrocketed. Unemployment has plummeted. The average income has soared.

Beach Boulevard through Point Cadet, once the heart of the Coast's seafood industry, has evolved into a Las Vegas-style strip of hotel-casinos. It includes the Isle of Capri Crowne Plaza Resort, which now stands where the twin riverboats were moored the morning of Aug. 1, 1992.

Meanwhile, the tourism industry, which began a slow, steady decline when Hurricane Camille smashed the region in 1969, is undergoing a major resurgence.

The number of visitors has jumped from 1.6 million in 1992 to more than 6.5 million last year. Scheduled jet service is returning to Gulfport-Biloxi Regional Airport. Beach Boulevard is filled with automobiles bearing license plates from as near as Louisiana and Alabama, and as far as Florida, Illinois and Texas.

The good times are rolling, and it all began when Gollott's dice tumbled across the green felt of a craps table on the Diamond Lady.

"When the casinos came we knew it'd be good - follow me?" asked Bobby Mahoney, owner of Mary Mahoney's Old French House. "But we didn't think it'd be this damn good."

Changing public attitudes and a nationwide economic slump ignited an explosion in casino gambling in the late 1980s. From 1988 to 1993, riverboat and dockside casinos sprung up in Iowa, Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri and Indiana. South Dakota and Colorado permitted limited-stakes gambling in the historical towns of Deadwood, S.D., and Cripple Creek, Blackhawk and Central City, Colo.

"The spread of legal gambling was rapid, fueled by the need of government to generate revenue without incurring the wrath of voters," said Shannon Bybee, director of the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "In most cases, it occurred in declining economic areas."

South Mississippi was not only economically deprived, but also historically accepting of casino gambling, having acquiesced to illegal casinos that thrived on the Coast in the 1950s and early '60s at places like Mr. Lucky's, Raven, Porter House, Fiesta and Gay Paree.

"They operated openly. They had names, logos, signage, the works," said longtime Biloxi resident Kirk Kirkland, now an executive with Primadonna Resorts in Las Vegas. "They were clean. They were carpeted with mirrors. They had an economic impact on the area. Biloxi was a tourist area back then, and the gaming enhanced that. The authorities just looked the other way."

In the midst of the new wave of legal casino gambling, Congress in 1988 passed the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. Ironically intended to halt the proliferation of reservation gambling, court interpretation of the act enabled tribes to launch Las Vegas-style casinos on reservations in more than 20 states.

Twenty-six states now have some form of legal casino gambling. Thirty-two percent of U.S. households gambled at a casino in 1996, compared with 17 percent in 1990, according to a Harrah's Entertainment survey. Casino revenues nationwide in 1996 reached $22.8 billion, compared with $8.9 billion in 1991.

Most states that legalized casinos limited the number of licenses and required boats to cruise or put a lid on wagers and losses. Not Mississippi. Mississippi lawmakers allowed the industry to build on the Coast and along the Delta. The only requirement was that casinos be on the water.

"Water has cleansing properties," Bybee said. "It cleans it (gambling) up. Makes it acceptable."

Without the restrictions found in other states, Mississippi's casino industry didn't just grow, it erupted. Mississippi has 29 gambling operations and more combined square footage of casino space (1.3 million) than any state outside Nevada. Its casino revenues this year are expected to reach nearly $2 billion, ranking it third behind Nevada ($7.5 billion) and New Jersey ($3.8 billion).

The growth will continue, especially along the state's scenic Coast. Las Vegas casino owner Ralph Englestad's Imperial Palace, with an estimated price tag of $225 million, is expected to open late this year or early next year, adding more than 1,000 hotel rooms to the Coast's inventory. Mirage Resorts' $550 million Beau Rivage, scheduled to open in late 1998, will add another 1,800 rooms to the mix.

Circus Circus is tentatively planning to build on a site on the Bay of St. Louis. There are expected to be nearly 15,000 hotel and motel rooms on the Coast by late next year, compared with 6,500 in 1990.

Jets and hotel rooms. The beach. Golf courses. Charter fishing. The ambience. Three hundred years of history. It's all generating interest from larger casino companies such as Boyd Gaming, Hilton Hotels and, to a lesser extent, ITT, Harrah's Entertainment and MGM Grand.

"The Mississippi Gulf Coast certainly is one of the most desirable of all the emerging gaming jurisdictions," said Marc Grossman, Hilton Hotels' senior vice president of corporate affairs.

Mirage Resorts is expected to double the size of what is largely a 250-mile market, bringing gamblers from such metropolitan areas as Atlanta, Dallas and Miami and generating increasing interest from Wall Street. Most industry analysts believe what is now a $749 million market will in the next five years swell to $1 billion to $1.2 billion.

"You'll eventually see companies like Hilton and MGM positioning themselves to enter the market," said Jason Ader, an industry analyst with Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. "Beau Rivage will be the ultimate key to the process. Mirage Resorts, more than Imperial Palace, is capable of stimulating economic growth in the region."

That economic growth will hopefully extend beyond casino gambling. "We have a window of opportunity," said Larry Patterson, a member of the Harrison County Development Commission and one-time opponent of legalized gambling. "We have an economic boom going on right now. We need to do all we can possibly do to take advantage of this opportunity. We need this opportunity to diversify to get new industries."

The unfinished Beau Rivage already towers above the Coast. A casino industry that employs 31,000 people statewide and generates some $220 million in state and local tax revenues has become a dominant force in state politics and economics.

It may eventually shape Mississippi's character.

Money means power. And casino gambling has a high profile in the state capital. The Mississippi Gaming Association hopes by the next legislative session in January to have a full-time executive director to lobby for the industry in Jackson.

The American Gaming Association, the industry's lobby in Washington, D.C., is using Mississippi as a model of how casino gambling, with adequate regulations, can generate jobs and economic prosperity. The AGA hopes native son and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., can stand up for the industry against attacks on Capitol Hill.

To be sure, state legislators are keenly aware of the economic benefits of Mississippi's casinos. But gambling is an industry that at least to some degree preys on the weaknesses of others. Wherever it has emerged - be it Illinois or Missouri or Mississippi - its relationship with state legislatures has been tentative.

"I don't sense there is growing opposition to gaming," said Lt. Gov. Ronnie Musgrove. "I don't sense there is an overly affectionate relationship, either. There is a straightforward relationship; a belief there is a need for the industry to be properly regulated."

It's no surprise that Mississippi is not fully behind its gambling industry, said Bill Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"Any time the gaming industry comes into a new jurisdiction," Eadington said, "there are going to be problems."

Revenue generated by the casinos has been used to hire more police and to buy more patrol cars and equipment to fight crime.

"This city, with casinos, is safer now than it ever has been," Biloxi police Chief Tommy Moffett said.

The list of male and female escort services has grown. Pawn shops have cropped up to provide ready cash.

"They are open just like the casinos," said Gulfport police Sgt. G.E. Johnson II, "Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."

Traffic has gotten intense.

"I don't think you'll ever see the Coast again where you don't have a lot of traffic," Southern Highway Commissioner Ronnie Shows said.

Bartender Marty Rhodes, framed by a panoramic view of the Mississippi Sound through the windows of the Holiday Inn Biloxi Lounge, glanced east on Beach Boulevard.

"There's so much traffic with the casinos," Rhodes said. "I don't like to take the boulevard anymore. It makes me nervous."

Keith Rogers, a North Gulfport insurance salesman and one-time head of the anti-casino group Families for Quality Life, sat behind the desk of his North Gulfport insurance office.

"It's a much more hectic pace," Rogers said. When his group was more active five years ago, thought was given to carrying placards reading, "City 4 Sale."

"I'm sure that's what happened," Rogers said. "The scenic beauty, the character of the city and the laid-back atmosphere have all been sold."

John Usry stepped off the treadmill in the gym of his Biloxi apartment complex and wiped the sweat from his brow. Fed up with the trucking business, Usry enrolled in a 10-week casino dealers school.

"With Mirage and Imperial Palace opening up," Usry said, "there's gonna be more jobs than people."

The changes were inevitable.

"What happens when you bring a Japanese auto plant to Sparta, Tenn.?" Bybee asked. "What happens when you bring a 24-hour industry into a town? Yes, you are changing the culture. You're bringing in outsiders.

"Not everybody likes progress. Not everybody likes growth. Progress doesn't treat everybody equally."

archive