Land buys, fancy drawings part of gambling promotion strategy

John Seewer

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 | 9:17 a.m.

Developers and city leaders who want to bring gambling to Ohio are mapping out sites where casinos may stand someday and showing off drawings that reveal how these glitzy buildings could transform their downtowns.

It's all part of their strategy to sway public support for gambling in a state where voters twice have overwhelmingly rejected casinos.

Lorain Mayor Craig Foltin, who has been promoting colorful casino plans after announcing the city has entered into an agreement to sell land to an American Indian tribe, said the excitement has been growing.

"It's essential to legitimately make your case," he said.

Casinos have become the talk of the community since word spread that a former steel mill complex in Massillon was being considered as a casino site, said Steve DiPietro, a Canton businessman behind the proposal.

"It's part of the educational process," said Terry Casey, a consultant for the Eastern Shawnee tribe, which wants to put casinos in at least four Ohio cities: Botkins, Lorain, Lordstown and Monroe.

"You've got to show them you'd have shopping and you'd have recreation and you'd have entertainment," he said. "If we didn't have any sites, people would've doubted us."

The tribe has agreed to a two-year option for a $6 million purchase of six acres of lakefront property in Lorain and will pay $285,000 in options over two years.

There's a feeling among gambling supporters that it's only a matter of time before casinos come to the state despite the numerous hurdles that stand in their way.

They say the timing is right because the state's manufacturing economy is struggling and Ohio will soon be surrounded by gambling in its border states.

"We're a steel and automotive town and those kinds of towns aren't doing well these days," Foltin said.

He said it's inevitable that gambling will come to Ohio. "It's naive to think Ohio will be one of the few states without gambling forever."

But to get there, Indian tribes that want to open casinos must first persuade the governor to support the idea and then get federal approval. Gov. Bob Taft opposes the idea.

Another group, led by Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell, wants a statewide vote on whether to allow cities with more than 50,000 people and counties with entertainment attractions that draw more than 1 million tourists a year to vote on casinos.

Ohio voters soundly defeated casino ballot issues in 1990 and 1996.

David Zanotti, president of the Ohio Roundtable, a conservative group that helped defeat those first two casino proposals, said the idea that casino gambling will come to Ohio because other states have it makes no sense.

"Just because everybody else is being stupid doesn't mean we have to be stupid," he said.

Plus, there are so many casinos near Ohio that new ones in the state can't possibly draw enough tourists from other states, he said.