Detroit’s first casino set to open today

Justin Hyde

Thursday, July 29, 1999 | 11:54 a.m.

DETROIT -- Mayor Dennis Archer stood at the craps table in Detroit's new $225 million casino, pulled out a large pair of fuzzy dice and gave them a roll. They came up seven.

"It's nice to see things come to fruition," Archer said Wednesday, hours after the Michigan Gaming Control Board granted the MGM Grand Detroit Casino the state's first casino license. "What this means ... is we will now be about the business of seeing so many people be gainfully employed."

The grand opening of the temporary casino, scheduled for this afternoon, makes Detroit the largest U.S. city with casino gambling.

"We're obviously very excited about this. The opportunity to be a part of the rebirth of a great city is a very important factor," Terry Lanni, chairman of MGM Grand, said.

The casino is in a renovated Internal Revenue Service building on the western fringe of downtown, close to a freeway and the Joe Louis Arena.

It has two floors with 2,370 slot machines and video poker games and 83 table games. It will stay open around the clock and is expecting more than 10,000 visitors a day, MGM Grand President Lyn Baxter said.

The casino plans to employ about 2,700 people, called "cast members" in MGM Grand parlance, about half of whom live in Detroit.

In 1996, Michigan voters approved a ballot proposal authorizing three casinos in Detroit. Four previous proposals from 1976 to 1988 had been defeated by wide margins.

Archer allowed the three casino groups to open temporary operations while developers build billion-dollar hotel-casino complexes on Detroit's riverfront. The other two temporary casinos are expected to open later this year.

Under its agreement with the city, the three temporary casinos can stay open only four years, and space for gambling is limited to 75,000 square feet. The conditions are designed to spur the building of the permanent casinos.

Martha Jean Steinberg, a longtime Detroit radio personality and an investor in the MGM Grand, said she hoped the casino would help to heal the rift between Detroit and its suburbs.

"It means hope, it means jobs, it means entertainment, it means excitement, it means coming to see something beautiful and not always looking at a war zone," she said.