COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE ON RULES - - - Room 400, City Hall Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Wednesday, June , 2007, 10:25 a.m. 7 - - - 8 9 10 Bill No's: 070006, 008, 010, 011, 012, 264, 391, 456, 458 - related to Commercial 11 Entertainment Districts. Full text of all bills contained within and attached hereto. 12 13 COUNCILMEMBERS PRESENT: Anna C. Verna, Chair Blondell Reynolds Brown Darrell L. Clarke William K. Greenlee Jack Kelly James F. Kenney Donna Reed Miller Brian J. O'Neill Daniel J. Savage - - - V A R A L L O Incorporated Litigation Support Specialists 1835 Market Street, Suite 600 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103 215.561.2220 215.567.2670 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation WITNESS Panel #1 - Administration Janice Woodcock, Executive Director..... Philadelphia City Planning Commission City Solicitor Romulo Diaz, Jr. ........ 26 Panel #2 - SugarHouse Reps. Bob Sheldon, President.................. 79 Dan Keating, Keating Construction Co. 86 Ian Cope, Cope-Linder Architects........ 90 Chuck Hardy, House Counsel.............. 103 Panel #3 - Foxwoods Rep. Wm. G. Schwartz, Esq., Obermeyer et al. 114 Panel #4 Stephen A. Wexler....................... 126 Central Del. Riverfront Advisory Group A.J. Thompson, Fishtown resident........ 132 Shawn Rairigh, NABR..................... 143 David Odell............................. 150 Green Party Transit Working Group Panel #5 Donna Tomlinson, Fishtown Resident...... 155 Founding member, Fishtown Neighbors Charlotte Levins, Fishtown Resident..... 158 Lauren Griffith, Fishtown Resident...... 162 Joe Rafter, N. Liberties restaurateur... 164 Panel #6 - Labor Reps. Pat Gillespie, Building Trades Council 166 Wade Stevens, Labors District Council 170 John Kane, Plumbers Local 690........... 173 Gene Blagman, Philadelphia FOP.......... 174 3 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Witness list cont'd.) Panel #6 Katie Recker, Esq., Fishtown Neighbors 180 J. Lewis, No. Libs. Neighborhood Assoc. 189 Tully Speaker, Logan Square N. Assoc. 194 Paul Boni, Society Hill Resident........ 198 Panel #7 Jeff Rush, DRNA......................... 206 Professor Robert Goodman................ 213 Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass. Professor Fred Murphy................... 243 Business School of Temple University Panel #8 Dolores Griffith, Fishtown Action....... 261 MaryAnne Warrington, Fishtown Resident 263 Wil Rojas, Fishtown Resident............ 267 Eric Rudy, Fishtown Resident............ 272 Panel #9 Chuck Valentine, Fishtown Resident...... 281 Joanne Sherman, Fishtown Resident....... 292 Charlie Hocker, Fishtown Resident....... 297 Panel #10 - Clergy Pastor Mary Miller...................... 300 Kensington Old Brick United Methodist Reverend Dick Ullman, Episcopal priest 309 Reverend D. Joy Segal, Rector........... 316 Gloria Dei Old Swedes' Church. 4 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Witness list cont'd.) Panel #11 Delilah Winder, Chairperson............. 322 African-American Chamber of Commerce. Julie Wong, President................... 326 Asian Chamber of Commerce. Bob Nelson, President, Philadelphia OIC 327 Panel #12 Paul Kimport, local business owner...... 352 Arrone Dascal, " " " ...... 355 Frank Maimone, " " " ...... 357 Mike Seidenberg, Republican candidate... 374 Philadelphia 1st District Council Janine Missaoui, Harrowgate resident.... 383 Panel #13 Deb Diamond, GPTMC...................... 391 Ed Grose, Gr. Philadelphia Hotel Assoc. 397 Panel #14 Jim Paylor, Int'l Longshoremen's Assoc. 405 Jethro Heiko, Casino-Free Philadelphia 429 Daniel Hunter, " " " 442 Michael McGettigan, resident............ 460 5 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Council President Verna bangs gavel.)
We'v e had enough entertainment for the morning that's it. I'm asking everybody to please respect each other we're going to go through this. And, I am telling you, we are not going to have any interruptions. They wouldn't allow that in Washington, they wouldn't allow it in Harrisburg, and I don't know why we should allow it here. So I am asking, please have respect for each other. This is a public hearing of the Committee on Rules. I would ask Mr. McPherson to please read the bills before us this morning. MR. McPHERSON: Bill No. 21 070006, an ordinance amending Section 22 14-1605 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Regulated Uses," by adding licensed gaming facilities as a regulated use, all under certain terms 6 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and conditions. Bill No. 070008, an ordinance 4 amending Chapter 14-400 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Commercial Entertainment District," by deleting the provisions authorizing the City Planning Commission to approve temporary facilities; by removing licensed gaming facilities and offtrack betting facilities as permitted uses; and by deleting any provision that may undermine Philadelphia local zoning controls, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 070010, an ordinance 17 amending Chapter 14-400 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Commercial Entertainment Districts," by prohibiting districts within one mile of one another, providing additional restrictions for gross floor area, open area, and waterfront setback requirements; and providing for additional signage controls, all under 7 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation certain conditions. Bill No. 070011, an ordinance 4 amending Section 14-1600 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Miscellaneous," by adding a new section entitled "Prohibition on Licensed Gaming Facilities," prohibiting the erection, construction, alteration, or use of licensed gaming facilities and providing that no 12 variance may be granted from such prohibitions, all under certain conditions. Bill No. 070012, an ordinance 16 amending Chapter 14-400 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Commercial Entertainment District (CED)," by providing that no ordinance designating a Commercial Entertainment District may be enacted unless a Neighborhood Improvement District has first been created that includes within its service area the proposed commercial entertainment district, all under 8 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 070264, an ordinance 4 amending Section 14-1624 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "North Delaware Avenue Area special district controls," by changing the title and expanding the boundaries to include the area generally bounded by Oregon Avenue, Front Street, the Delaware River, and Spring Garden Street, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 070391, an ordinance 14 amending Chapter 14-1600 of the Philadelphia Code, entitled "Miscellaneous," by adding a new section entitled "Prohibited Locations for Licensed Gaming Facilities," all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 070456, an ordinance 21 to amend the Philadelphia Zoning Maps by changing the zoning designation of certain areas of land located within an area bounded by Delaware, Shackamaxon Street (extended), the Delaware River, 9 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and Ellen Street (extended); and making certain designations relating to gross floor area, height regulations, and off-street parking; and providing that provisions relating to the Commercial Entertainment District shall control over certain other provisions, all under certain terms and conditions. Bill No. 070458, an ordinance 11 approving the planning of development for a Commercial Entertainment District in an area generally bounded by Delaware River, Shackamaxon Street (extended), the Delaware River, and Ellen Street.
Than k you. Before we begin our hearing this morning, I would like to make announcement as to how the Rules Committee will proceed today. The committee will first hear testimony from persons who wish to testify on any of the bills scheduled 10 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation for hearing. Once that hearing concludes, a meeting of the Rules Committee will be convened, if necessary, for the sole purposes of adopting amendments to the bills. However, all of the bills being heard today, whether amended or not, will be held in committee. The committee will not take any action today to report any bills from committee. That means all of the bills will remain in committee over the summer. Are there any questions from members of the committee? (No questions.) (Applause.)
Seeing none -- (Applause and cheering continue.) (Council President Verna bangs gavel.)
11 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Please, we have a very lengthy list. We would like to hear from everybody who would like to be testifying today. And I am asking you again, there is no 6 reason to applaud or boo or express your feelings. So, please, I am begging you, please have respect for each other and for us. We're anxious so hear from you and what you think, so let's not delay this anymore than we have to. Councilman Ramos, did you want to be recognized?
Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Madam President. On Bill No. 070456, I would like to offer an amendment to that bill. I am not a member of the Rules Committee. I will ask graciously for one of the members of the Rules Committee to propose this amendment. This is adding Section 4 to Bill No. 070456 that reads: "The provision of this ordinance shall be 12 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation effective only upon certification by the City Solicitor to the City Councilmembers for the 1st and 5th Districts and the executive director of Planning Commission, that a not-for-profit organization have been established for the purpose of providing community benefits in the neighborhood surrounding the Commercial Entertainment District; and that such organization will be capable of providing on an ongoing basis enhanced municipal services in that neighborhood." Madam President, this is very consistent with what has been happened in other Commercial Entertainment Districts where there is a Special Services District that will make sure that the community concerns are being addressed at all times. Those exist in Center City, University City, and the sports complex. They could very well exist if 13 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation it is the will of the people and the people that will benefit, if that is the determination of the community and all of the interested parties and the SugarHouse site as well. So I offer this amendment to Bill No. 070456 for your consideration.
Than k you. Are you going to give that to a member of the committee?
The bill 13 has been circulated to the committee members.
Okay . Do all members have a copy of the amendment? Thank you. Okay. I would ask Mr. McPherson to please call the first witness. MR. McPHERSON: The Administration. (Witnesses come forward.) (Jeers.)
14 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Please. Good morning. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good morning, Chairwoman Verna and members of the Rules Committee. I am Janice Woodcock, executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, and I am here to testify in Bills No. 070456 and 070458. I also request that Bill No. 13 070458 be amended to include the plan of development exhibit presented before you. Bill No. 070456 will rezone the proposed SugarHouse Casino site from a zoning designation of G2, general industrial, to a zoning designation of CED, Commercial Entertainment District. Bill No. 070458 approves the plan of development for the SugarHouse Casino to make way for the issuance of zoning and building permits for the 15 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation project. I will first review the rezone proposal, describe the plan of development, and then outline the benefits of passage of this legislation that will be available to the city and the Commonwealth. In order for the SugarHouse Casino to proceed, the zoning of the site must be first reclassified. This bill proposes to rezone the site bounded by Delaware Avenue, Shackamaxon Street, the Delaware River, and Ellen Street for the Commercial Entertainment District zoning classification CED. The CED zoning is necessary for the construction of a casino. It is the only designation in Philadelphia that permits licensed gaming facilities and their accessory uses, such as hotels, restaurants, offtrack betting facilities, and theaters. Additionally, the rezone of this site to CED will remove the North Delaware 16 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Special Controls District, which would otherwise prohibit uses commonly associated to gaming such as restaurants, nightclubs, and entertainment of guests. By rezoning the site to CED, this bill sets forth specific development standards, including a parking reissue of four parking spaces for every five gaming positions, a building height limit of 300 feet and 30 stories, and overall density for the project of 400 percent, meaning that the building's floor area can equal up to four times the site area. The Commercial Entertainment District (CED) zoning district requires that for all sites zoned CED, a plan of development must be reviewed and approved by both the Philadelphia City Planning Commission and City Council. This plan of development is a master plan that sets out the layout, phasing, height, gross floor area uses, 17 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation occupied area, the size and location of parking areas, signage, landscaping for every building located within the CED. It also includes the results of the PCPC design review relative to the building masting materials, quality and appearance, and impact of the development on the public environment. Bill No. 070458 would approve the plan of development as previously approved by the City Planning Commission. Before I highlight the positive results of the Planning Commission review, I want to mention why we have pursued this course for project review. While we did not control the Gaming Board site selection, the city does retain local zoning authority; therefore, the Administration worked diligently with casino operators to assist them in complying with local laws to address the traffic impacts, to 18 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation provide employment opportunities for all Philadelphians. The alternative would have been a project imposed on the city without the benefit of local review. We believe that this alternate process would have been less responsive to local issues and concerns. For the physical aspects of this project, this local review has resulted in positive benefits to the City of Philadelphia at this location. In summary, I have seven points. Number 1. SugarHouse has agreed to construct traffic improvements to maintain the current level of service of 18 intersections impacted by the development and to evaluate traffic according to the standard at their expense at each stage of development.
This agreement is attached to this testimony as Attachment A. 2. SugarHouse has made strong 19 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation a commitment, because of their corporate values and because of the importance of the environment, to the Administration to use leadership in environmental design building standards in the construction of the project and to include a green roof in the project. Specifically, SugarHouse has agreed to spend at least one million to make 60,000 square feet of its Phase 1 room into a green roof and will work to achieve leadership in environmental design, grading in initial and subsequent phases of development. This agreement is attached to the testimony as Attachment B. 3. The plan of development includes construction of the public riverfront area as well as access to it in the first phase of development. The public access points to the water will be inviting from all city streets. Intersections will be designed to minimize pedestrian and vehicle 20 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation conflicts. The access points will be well lit, safe, secure, and clearly marked as open to the public. The public access components, including the walkway areas along the water, will allow public access 8 hours a day. The upkeep of the public 9 areas will be the responsibility of the 10 gaming operator. 11 4. SugarHouse will evaluate 12 the amount of parking prior to 13 proceeding with Phases 2 and 3, with 14 the results submitted to the Planning 15 Commission. The purpose of the parking 16 review will be for the allowance of the 17 reduction of the parking to avoid 18 overbuilding of parking that ends up 19 not being necessary. 20 5. The SugarHouse team 21 designed a site and building to enliven 22 the public environment around it, 23 strive for human scale, and improve the 24 pedestrian's experience -- and I have several points under here. 21 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Along Delaware Avenue, there will be a street wall feature lining the avenue that will exclude the points of ingress and egress, but it will elsewhere create visual interest at street level. In all phases of construction, blank walls visible from public streets or the waterfront promenade will receive special landscaping or other creative treatment until such time as subsequent phases are constructed. The parking garbage facade that faces the public walkway will receive special screening and lighting from to minimize the visual impact of the garage from adjacent sites and public walkways. Number 6. The development has been designed to allow future walkway connections which will be built on adjacent sites, and I might add here that the Planning Commission has been looking overall at how the trail will 22 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation work along those adjacent sites. 7. SugarHouse will replace a major combined sewer overflow outfall on its site and expand this facility across Delaware Avenue to accelerate the city's efforts to address flooding in the residential areas near North Delaware. Solicitor Diaz will review additional provisions of the development agreement made possible through a concerted effort on the part of the SugarHouse team to address local and citywide concerns, including the efforts to address quality-of-life issues in the communities adjacent to the casino site. The last part of my testimony will review the economic benefits of approving this plan of development as part of successfully introducing gaming into the city. The construction and operation of two casinos in the city of 23 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Philadelphia has huge economic benefits. The Gaming Advisory Task Force the mayor commissioned two years ago concluded that the casinos will lead to between 945 and 1,071 temporary construction jobs paying between 30 and 34 million in wages, and another $1,703 to $1,922 in direct construction-related jobs, paying between 69 million and 78 million in wages.
The most important benefit will flow from the 7,000 to 12,000 permanent jobs we expect to see created, including between 1,445 to 1500 gaming operation jobs, between 2,100 and 4,600 new jobs in ancillary operations at the two Philadelphia casinos. Additionally, casinos will indirectly lead to between 3,900 and 6,400 new jobs from growth in other industries and local businesses across the economy that service casino patrons 24 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and businesses and that service casinos. These jobs and other opportunities created by the expansion of our Convention Center are responsible for more than 46 million in tax revenue to the city's five-year financial plan adopted by City Council. Benefits to the city do not stop here. Gaming will provide the city with more than million a year 13 in host fees and millions more in 14 taxes. The current five-year financial 15 plan includes 71 million in host fees 16 attributable to gaming revenues that 17 the city can use to support critical 18 city services such as police and public 19 safety, after-school programs, 20 increased funding for parks and 21 recreation. In addition, the 22 Philadelphia School District will 23 receive 5 million annually from the host fee payments casino operators must make under state law. 25 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation That's over 100 million in total fees and tax revenues to the city over the next five years from the successful introduction of gaming into Philadelphia. )
Ther e will be silence or we will continue this and walk out. Now, we want to hear what the community has to say as well as everyone else, so I am asking you once again, there is no reason for you to personally be expressing your views the way you are. Please continue. And I'd like it to be as silent as it is right now. Please continue.
Thank you, Madam President. The City Planning Commission, at its meeting of May 22, 2007, 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation considered and approved the plan of development for the SugarHouse Casino. Although the legislation approving the plan of development was introduced, the exhibit, the plan of development itself, was not formally filed. We promptly placed a copy on file with the clerk in addition to the publicly available copies at the Planning Commission, but the bill must be amended. At this time, I am requesting that the exhibit be included as an amendment to this bill. This concludes my testimony. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today and I would be pleased to answer any questions you have after the City Solicitor completes his testimony.
Than k you. Thank you very much. Good morning. CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Good morning, Madam President and members of 27 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the Rules Committee. I am City Solicitor Romulo Diaz, Jr. 's 07056 [sic] and 070458 related to the development of the SugarHouse Casino. I will focus my testimony on the joint efforts of the city and SugarHouse to negotiate a settlement agreement that provides tangible and substantial benefits to surrounding neighborhoods and citizens of Philadelphia. Such an agreement is intended, among other things, to protect those most directly affected by the SugarHouse development. It is also intended to provide certainty and enforceability as to the developer commitments. I am pleased to report that following direct negotiations involving the mayor and SugarHouse principals, SugarHouse and the city have reached an 28 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation agreement in principle to settle disputes related to the opening of the SugarHouse Casino. This agreement builds on the process begun by the Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force and discussions held over a year ago with all five applicants to the Philadelphia casino licenses. The city and SugarHouse will draft a final agreement in accordance with the agreement in principle. The agreement addresses quality-of-life issues important to the surrounding communities and a broader range of issues important to all Philadelphians. These issues include transportation, public safety, community reinvestment, economic opportunity, design quality, waterfront access, environmental issues, and local taxes. SugarHouse has worked cooperatively with the city for many months and, as such, some of the 29 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation elements have already been incorporated into the plan of development before this committee. I commend SugarHouse for its demonstrated to our community and its good corporate citizenship. In order to inform the deliberations of City Council and this committee on the pending bills, I would like to summarize the key terms of the settlement agreement. No issue discussed with casino developers has been more contentious than local property tax abatements. It is fundamentally unfair to abate taxes for casinos when they were legalized by the state to allow for property tax and wage-tax relief. Indeed, the state legislation authorizing gaming was amended to expressly prohibit casinos from receiving state tax abatements. Accordingly, the Gaming Advisory Task Force recommended that Philadelphia eliminate local-property tax abatements for casinos. 30 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation In the absence of a settlement, I foresaw the tax litigation was all but certain, and the city would have even greater difficulty and delay in achieving economic and non-economic concessions, which I will describe shortly, that we believe are necessary to make casinos work for the city and its residents. 8 million in tax-related revenues over an 11-year period that includes construction and the 10-year tax abatement period. 7 million in additional tax revenues to the city. This amount is over and above approximately $6 million in annual wage, business-privilege, and sales taxes that likely will be paid by 31 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation SugarHouse, and does not include any of the fiscal benefits from spinoff economic activity, Convention Center expansion, host fees, and wage-tax cuts funded by gaming revenues. Transportation presents the biggest non-economic challenge from two licensed casinos sited on the Delaware riverfront. SugarHouse has committed to a plan for traffic improvements at locations designated by the city in the SugarHouse vicinity to ensure that these roads and intersections continue to function at least as well as they do today.
The study and engineering process is ongoing, but SugarHouse has made explicit commitments that you will find in their May 22, 2007, letter to the executive director of the Planning Commission. The provisions of this letter are part of the settlement agreement. Some of the SugarHouse 32 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation transportation challenges require solutions that involve PennDOT and the already-planned designed and funded reconstruction of the Girard Avenue interchange. Similarly, there will have to be PennDOT-funded interim ramp constructed before the opening of SugarHouse to keep the neighborhood roads clear. The city and the Commonwealth are both committed to achieving that solution. The plan of development contains sufficient parking pursuant to the Commercial Entertainment District (CED) requirements and according to the city's parking experts. However, to avoid overbuilding of parking facilities, SugarHouse has agreed to meet with the Planning Commission to review whether parking facilities are fruitfully utilized and develop any mutually acceptable alterations before construction of parking begins in all 33 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation future phases. SugarHouse has developed an economic opportunity plan mirroring in many respects but also significantly augmenting its diversity commitments to the State Gaming Control Board. Moreover, SugarHouse has committed to hiring Philadelphians and Philadelphia businesses and helping fund casino-specific training through Philadelphia OIC. We will report shortly to Council on the specifics of the EOP. I note that the Gaming Control Commission recently determined that kitchen-staff positions need not be licensed by the Gaming Control Board; thus, these positions as well as some vendor-employment opportunities are now potentially open to the ex-offender community. As recommended by the Gaming Advisory Task Force, the city will seek SugarHouse reinvestments in the 34 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation immediate vicinity similar to those by the city's major sports franchises. Although negotiations with the immediate neighbors are ongoing, SugarHouse has agreed in concept to fund a Special Services District at the minimum level of $1 million annually, escalating over time, with startup funding during the construction period. As with the stadium district, this Special Services District is expected to provide enhanced municipal services in the area closest to the casino and to be governed by a board led by elected neighbor residents; thus, the neighborhood will choose whether to allocate the SugarHouse funding to litter patrols, additional tree-planting, improved sidewalks, or other community-enhancing features. SugarHouse has submitted to the city a plan of development that is fully compliant with the CED requirements. As Janice Woodcock has 35 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation testified, it also reflects substantial design evolution resulting from a pre-submission design review process. SugarHouse is fully committed to helping make the Delaware Riverfront Trail a reality. The new development will provide for permanent outdoor access to a public promenade along the river, as detailed in the plan of development. Provisions of the agreement will require SugarHouse to build its promenade and public-access features during the initial construction. This portion of the trail will remain private property; thus, SugarHouse will provide all landscaping and maintenance for the property. SugarHouse has taken significant steps to a develop a casino that is environmentally responsible. Specifically, SugarHouse has agreed to spend at least $1 million to make at least 60,000 square feet of its Phase 36 1 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation roof into a green roof and to undertake a similar design process for future phases.
This commitment represents approximately two-thirds of the greenable roof in Phase 1, as detailed in the May 22, 2007, letter to the executive director of the Planning Commission. SugarHouse also has agreed to -- both to retain a lead certification consultant and to share the consultant's reports with the Planning Commission staff. The Philadelphia Fire Department, as part of the Gaming Advisory Task Force process, determined that each casino would have to provide for a means to handle emergency medical calls from its own facilities. Accordingly, SugarHouse will have its own personnel trained as emergency medical technicians and will provide private ambulance services. SugarHouse also has agreed to 37 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation provide ample onsite security that will coordinate with the Pennsylvania State Police, Which has jurisdiction over the gaming floor, to secure the property. There will be obligations that fall on the Philadelphia Police Department, and their efforts will be funded through the tax-settlement payments. SugarHouse. Has agreed to fund all infrastructure costs on its property, similar to other major development projects. This commitment includes the replacement of a major combined sewer overflow outfall at Laurel Street at a cost of $20 million. At the request of the Water Department, SugarHouse also has agreed to expand the new sewer and extend the expansion into and across Delaware Avenue. This additional work will be funded out of the settlement payments and will accelerate the city's efforts to address flooding in the residential 38 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation areas near North Delaware Avenue. There are other important commitments. For example, SugarHouse has agreed to comply with, rather than challenge, the city's existing smoking ordinance, and we have agreed to work with SugarHouse to determine which areas, if any, qualify for exemptions under that law. SugarHouse is committed to use PGW natural gas to heat the casino and is in discussions on how to develop a combined cooling, heating, electrical plant that could lead to more revenue for PGW and shrink the casino's environmental footprint. And SugarHouse and the Administration have agreed to continue the streamlined development process that has worked efficiently to address local land use concerns. We believe that these commitments are appropriate and reasonable for any development of this 39 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation size and complexity, but they are particularly notable in the context of an industry that will be paying approximately 50 percent of its revenues in state taxes and will be subject to comprehensive gaming regulation by the state. Moreover, the state tax revenues will fund the Convention Center expansion, city wage tax relief, $5 million in annual payments to the Philadelphia School District, and our annual host fee projected to reach $23 million annually in the current five-year plan. In that context, I am particularly proud of the good will demonstrated by both parties, which has made this settlement agreement in principle possible. We look forward to finalizing the settlement agreement soon. The settlement agreement, like the plan of development before you for approval, 40 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation are steps that we hope will assure that the SugarHouse Casino will be developed in a manner that works for Philadelphia and its residents. That concludes my testimony. I would be pleased to answer any questions at this time. Thank you.
Than k you. Are there any questions from members of the committee? Councilman DiCicco, I see your light is on; did you want to be recognized?
Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Madam President. Good morning. (Exaggerated coughing sounds heard from balcony section of chambers.)
I'm not going to engage in calling of names or anything. Everyone knows my position when it comes to development in this 41 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Council. I've said this before and I'll just say it one more time; hopefully, it's the last time I have to say it: I'm pro-development, I've been pro-development. I supported the stadiums, I support the Convention Center expansion. Just yesterday, this Rules Committee reported out favorably a bill 12 that will set in motion a $500 million development at the corner of Broad and Washington Avenue. Not too long ago, this committee again reported out a bill that will set and stage the development of a 65-story high-rise condominium apartment complex development on Delaware Avenue. I can go on and on and on about the bills that not only I and this committee have supported over the past. We are pro-development. This is about saving neighborhoods; this isn't about whether or not we want casinos, 42 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation at least as far as I'm concerned. I am not anti-casino; I'm just against the locations, and I've said that repeatedly, and I'm not going to talk about it. (Applause.)
I don't need the applause, and I appreciate it, but there are people in here from the building trades who have been twisting this thing from day one for political agendas to support what their needs are and not the needs of this community. So let me get on with my question to the Solicitor. In the community benefits agreement, there is a clause or a sentence in there regarding the term of the agreement, and it talks about termination and the process by which the CBA, the community benefits agreement, would be terminated, or could be terminated. Why do we need that in there? It's on , begins at the last 43 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation sentence on . "The agreement shall automatically renew for additional one-year terms thereafter unless any one party hereto notifies the others in writing of its desire to terminate this agreement at least 60 days prior to the end of the initial term..." et cetera, et cetera. Why do we need a termination agreement, and what do you think would prompt SugarHouse to want to terminate the agreement? CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Councilman, in fact, you just mentioned a couple of points in response. First of all, this is not the city's document; this is SugarHouse's document. As I indicated in my prepared remarks, the discussions relative to the Special Services District are ongoing, have not been completed. The figures that I mention in connection with the payments that I 44 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation understand have been agreed to have not yet been settled, but that's my understanding with regard to the figures that have been put on the table by SugarHouse to community representatives. I also note that in connection with the amendment that was recommended today for the committee's consideration, there would be the creation of the Special Services District that would to be certified as being in existence and capable of providing ongoing services in connection with this particular district. All of that would have to be in place before the CED rezoning approval would be effective. And so the purpose of my response to your question, Councilman, is to point out that we are not a party to this agreement. But clearly given the importance of protecting the nearby neighbors, the amendment that was 45 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation offered today, I think, will require that this Special Services District negotiation be completed hopefully promptly and provide the kind of clarity that you're seeking. And so with that, I will stop.
Okay. I just -- it's disturbing for me to see that in there, so... CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Well, I think with regard to the termination date, we certainly, in connection with the city's direct negotiation with SugarHouse, have been in constant discussion and negotiation about elements like who has a right to terminate and on what grounds, et cetera. Clearly, that's an issue that needs to be addressed. It would appear to me -- and I'm speaking personally, but it would appear to me that so long as the SugarHouse Casino exists, the need for those supplemental municipal services 46 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation will continue, the need to protect the nearby neighbors will continue. And I would understand that if the amendment offered today is adopted by this committee that there will be a requirement that that Special Services District continue regardless of what may be in a draft agreement at this stage relating to termination.
Thank you. Do you know whether any community members were a part of the discussion regarding this CBA? Do you have any knowledge of any community members being involved? CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: I have not been involved directly in any of those discussions, Councilman, so I do not know.
Okay. My question to the Planning Commissioner -- good morning.
And thank you for being here. And you know I have the utmost respect for you; we've been working well since you've taken on this new position. In your testimony, you talk about the economic benefits. Most of what gaming is about has to do with disposable income. Most of the money that Philadelphia realizes by way of entertainment and cultural activities of either from people or the surrounding communities is based on what they have disposable income. They go to our theaters, they go to our restaurants, they do things that we have been promoting. That disposable income may shift to casinos. What happens to the economic benefits then -- the restaurants, the theaters, the concerts and all of those other activities? There's a minimal amount, there's just a finite amount of money 48 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that could be spent. What do you think the impact would be then?
Well, I will say that one of the things we know that it -- right now, the economic benefit is not being experienced by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; it just goes to neighboring areas. So we want to capture the economic activity that has been going outside of our borders up to this point.
Let me ask you a hypothetical question. You're a city planner. Assuming that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said to the City of Philadelphia, and did it the right way, that we were going to approve gaming for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania but we were going to allow the city of Philadelphia and other municipalities to make a decision as to where these casinos would be placed. As a city planner, would you 49 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation have chosen the waterfront as a site? And do you think that gaming is necessary for future development on the river? Your honest opinion.
We actually did a study -- the Administration did a study prior to the release of the decision of placing two casinos on the waterfront, and because the five sites suppose that at least --
Let me stop you, if I may, and I don't mean to be rude. Assuming we didn't have those five sites, 'cause those five sites were a result of many sites that were being --
Forgettin g that there were any sites -- there were no sites even discussed. City of Philadelphia, you're going to get two gaming licenses. You 50 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation go and decide the places where you think -- 'cause I --
With all due respect, Mr. Solicitor, if there was no -- I just -- I'm curious 'cause in your comments, you talked about development and economic benefits.
I'd love to answer that question, and thank you for that question, because I think that no 18 matter where you put a casino inside the city, you would have to answer the question: As a city, is gaming beneficial? I think that when the task force convened between the time of the passage of the State Gaming Act and prior to the selection of sites, the 51 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation answer is: Yes, if it's properly introduced. So how would you go about introducing gaming and locating it properly? You'd have to -- you would -- no matter where you put it, there's probably going to be some local opposition.
I understand that, I understand that. My question again is: If the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were today to enact gaming -- Act 71, 72, whatever it is -- and said to the City of Philadelphia, you're going to get two licenses, you go decide on sites that you believe would be most appropriate, where it would benefit not only -- and I agree on the benefits.
Let's say we agree on the benefits of gaming and all of that other stuff.
Where would these locations be best suited in terms of economic development or to stimulate economic development in communities? And forgetting the -- not -- putting aside for a moment the community opposition 'cause just about anywhere, you're going to find that, and I recognize that pretty much in any community.
Would you, as a city planner, the head of the City Planning Commission, recommend any of the sites, any sites along the central Delaware waterfront?
I would say that if you were going to -- I actually believe that the waterfront could take one, but probably -- maybe not two, and I think that we said that as a study group --
-- because of the -- the transportation structure that is not in place in advance. I also will say that the -- the question was, would you pick the waterfront as a site for casinos?
Any sites along the -- forget these two -- anywhere within the central Delaware waterfront, would you have recommended any sites within that area -- and you know the area quite well --
The Planning Commission -- the Planning Commission -- right.
Given the fact that there's a lot of development 54 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that has been going on and is continuing. You and I have been working on projects for a long time.
The Commission would never haul off and pick one because, first of all, the nature of planning is never, you know, we get to say. It's not the Robert (indiscernible) days. But you'd have to --
But you're approving a plan. I know I got you boxed into a corner, but you were boxed into a corner not too long ago when the Administration rushed the Planning Commission to approve this plan, all right? And I apologize. They created this; I didn't. We didn't create it; the Administration created this.
I believe that you would want to pick a -- there are sites on the waterfront that, when we 55 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation have looked at the different locations that are more suitable because you can allow the traffic to go directly into the casino, the ones on the northern portion. They also are in areas that are the furthest --
Um, that's -- that's closer to neighborhoods, so on the criteria of proximity to neighborhoods, that site, which we have already noted in the work that we did to evaluate the five sites was not 56 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation ideal for that reason.
Thank you. (Applause.) (Cheers.) CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Councilman --
Thank you, Madam Chair. CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: I would like to supplement what Ms. Woodcock just said. In connection with the study that she referred to, I believe that was the December 15, 2006, letter that the mayor sent to the Gaming Control Commission looking at the five sites that were then before the Gaming Control Board for location in Philadelphia. I think the mayor's statements in that letter are worth repeating, and that is that we evaluated the five 57 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation sites. We indicated some that we thought were better than others. We had a particular recommendation that was not approved by the Gaming Control Board, although that decision on licensing is on appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. But the mayor's statement in connection with the siting issue is that we believe that any of the five sites, with certain improvements and changes and modifications, could be made to work, although we had sites among the five that we thought were better suited. I would also point out that beginning in early 2005, recognizing that the Gaming Control Commission was going to be making a decision on behalf of the Commonwealth to site two casinos in Philadelphia through the State Legislation Act 71 that you referred to, we were trying to understand the impacts; we were trying to educate not 58 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation only ourselves but the community about those potential impacts and to ascertain what some mitigation strategies might look like. As to the most economically viable sites, certainly, a combination of two casinos in Philadelphia that included a riverfront site were considered to be economically viable and certainly had high returns in terms of revenues to the city. So I don't think that the City of Philadelphia, including the Planning Commission Director at the time and the Planning Commission staff, have ever taken the position that a particular site was unacceptable; we do not have the authority in the City of Philadelphia to make that decision, unfortunately. And so what I'm trying to clarify for the record, sir, is that in connection with the siting decisions reached by the Gaming Control Board, 59 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation this administration has said that we will, in good faith, move forward to implement those siting decisions. We would have perhaps made different decisions, and there are measures that have to be taken to mitigate their impacts to make them work for Philadelphia and the neighborhoods affected by those sites. But I -- I -- I'm -- I want to try to -- to make clear for purposes of this record that the Administration including the Planning Commission and the Planning Commissioner or executive director of the Planning Commission and her predecessors, have all been a part of this overall Administration review. And the conclusions that I've just summarized, I think, are shared throughout the Administration, including the Planning Commission.
Well, I thank -- thank you for your comments, and I'm fully aware of what the 60 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Administration's position is. I guess for me, and we've said this repeatedly in the past, we've always taken this as a fait accomplis, and I think that was the wrong approach on the part of this administration. (Applause.)
And I -- I say that with the utmost respect. I think we should have been fighting harder with our lawmakers in Harrisburg. The Administration should have been fighting and said, Look, we accept the fact that we're going to have to live with two casinos, we accept it, we welcome two casinos, but let us go back and try to work with the two potential licensees who, for the most part, have been resistent to any discussion, any discussion of relocation, but for the Foxwoods folks who -- I actually drove them around. See, Mr. Solicitor and Madam Commissioner, you know, I've taken the 61 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation time 'cause I thought it was my responsibility and my duty to look at other sites. One is in my district. One other site that I thought would work, and it was a glimmer of hope, is not in my district; I didn't discuss it with the District Councilperson because I didn't think there was a need to until there was a willingness on the part of the licensee to even consider that. But those are the things that I think we should have been pursuing. And had we done that -- in my opinion, had we done that, we probably wouldn't be here today with all of this protesting and back and forth. We would have all lived with the fact that two sites that are away from neighborhoods and not in close proximity to any of the communities that we're concerned about, I believe these casinos would have been under construction as we speak. That's my opinion. 62 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Applause.)
But we've taken this position that it's something that we cannot undo. And I think that's wrong, and that goes to the crux of what the frustration is on the part of citizens is that we've always taken it -- oh, there's really nothing we can do. Well, those folks who gave us gaming are elected by the people the same way the rest of us in this room 13 are. And that's been my battle from day one. And we've never gotten that support from the Administration; it's been left up to Council to try to figure all of this out, when everybody's is trying to figure out how to get it done at the two sites that have been chosen. This is where you get it, this is what you have to accept, take it or leave it, it's a done deal. And that's what the 63 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation frustration about this whole thing is. (Applause.) CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Councilman, if I can just make two brief responses. (Jeers.) (Council President Verna bangs gavel.) CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: The first is, I would point out, as City Solicitor, that the decision with regard to the relocation of a licensed facility under the terms of Act 71 is a decision to be made by the State Gaming Control Board; we don't have that authority. Indeed, even a licensee voluntarily could not make that decision. And the second point that I would make, sir, is that in connection with the concerns about the impacts, you know, the mitigation measures and the land-use controls that I think the Planning Commission Executive Director 64 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation talked about in her testimony, you know, one of the areas where you and I, on behalf of the City Council and the Administration, have joined and linked our interests is in connection with the ongoing litigation now most recently in connection with the second casino site. You know, that's been taken up on appeal, and the Supreme Court has been asked by the licensee to direct the City of Philadelphia to issue building permits before we have concluded any negotiations, before we have made sure that mitigation plans are in place. And in that particular lawsuit, we have fought vigorously against that effort because we think to the extent that we have the ability to retain local land-use control, we will not give that up. And we have a filing due today in the Supreme Court. In that litigation -- and I can assure you and Councilmembers that we are taking a 65 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation very strong position. We didn't put the casino sites or select the casino sites; we didn't have a say in it as much as we would have liked. That decision has been made, and we are trying to make sure that to the extent that it has been made, the remaining authority of the city with regard land-use controls are effective, and we do not -- will not give those up voluntarily.
And I appreciate all of the efforts on behalf of the Solicitor's Office and all. But, you know, it gets -- you know, if we didn't approve the SugarHouse plan, I mean, that would have been another opportunity, I believe, for us to bring everybody back to the table. You know, the Planning Commissioner, in her own testimony, just said that, Well, if she had her way, she probably wouldn't pick the waterfront but maybe just one site for 66 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation a casino, but two could be problematic. Where do we go from here? What do we do with Foxwoods? I mean, we're going to have to figure this out. Are we just going to say, Well, file 7 these suits, we won't issue permits, with the understanding, though, at some point, the Supreme Court will make its decision. If they rule against the city or they rule against the communities, well, we're going to have to accept the fact that Foxwoods will be there, even though we think that two casinos is the worst-case scenario for the Central Delaware waterfront. I just -- I -- I just have a hard time understanding or accepting that.
Just a word -- on that note, just a word of advice to the City Solicitor. If the Supreme Court rules against us on Foxwoods, just do what the state legislature has done on the 67 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation other court ruling that required full funding of our court system; just ignore them. (Laughter.)
The Supreme Court -- the Pennsylvania legislature has ignored it for 9 years. We just don't issue the 10 permits. 11 (Applause.) 12 CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: I -- I 13 fully appreciate that point, 14 Councilman. 15
And 16 that's a hundred million dollars a 17 year, a hundred million dollars a year. 18
Thank you, Madam President. 68 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Good morning. First, I'd like to -- without assigning blame, I would just like to concur with my colleague Councilman DiCicco about this whole process; it's probably the worse process I've ever seen as it relates to anything of substance in my 20-plus years of government. (Applause.)
But, unfortunately, it was dumped in our laps. And then I would like to first -- I would like acknowledge and thank all of the residents from the area of Fishtown that I represent and the area of Northern Liberties, and I want to acknowledge, Council President, that there are actually 50, 60 more residents from Fishtown that are in the Caucus Room that got here a little late; they didn't realize that they had to be here at 7 in the morning to get 69 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the seats, so I want to acknowledge them and thank them for coming down also. Mr. Diaz, I was -- you were actually at this meeting the other day in what was called -- some people referred to it as "Ground Zero," and it's actually the area that's directly adjacent to the site. And, consistently, a particular issue came up about the possibility of condemnation, and I know that there was some reference in the casino language about condemnation, but there are some concerns not only of that issue, but additionally, the publicity that PennDOT, using its powers, would ultimately come in and condemn some property. And I actually got a call from a resident two days ago that said they got a notice in their door about eminent domain, and it was probably a ruse; I'm sure nobody in an official 70 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation capacity did that. But there is that level of concern that you just heard on an ongoing theme about the possibility that somewhere down the line, if none of us may be here to protect the residents, what happens? Can you tell me in very explicit terms what -- if this happens -- and I don't know what's going to happen. But if, in fact, SugarHouse happens, what's going to be put in place to stop the government, be it state or city, from coming in and using the powers of eminent domain to remove the people from that community? CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Right, Councilman. The Gaming Act, Act 71, as has a specific provision that prohibits the use of state eminent domain powers for purposes of furthering casino development. The issue that was raised was, Well, what happens if, for example, 71 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation there is a lot more traffic congestion in the future, and at some point, PennDOT might independently make a determination that it's seeking eminent domain authority to improve the traffic system. I think you have to look at it both in a practical and in a legal context. From the practical perspective, there already is, as I had testified earlier, there already is a planned, designed, funded interchange for Girard Avenue that will be constructed in the very near future and an additional temporary facility that we have discussed with the state that they're committed to also implementing even more quickly, before SugarHouse opens, to address traffic concerns. I would hope that on a practical basis, the kind of concern that was raised at the community meeting last Thursday evening would 72 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation essentially have been taken care of by these highway improvements that have already been approved and funded. But I also think that based upon the questions that were raised and because PennDOT is not the only authority in the Commonwealth with condemnation powers, then --
Yeah. Well, that was actually going to be my next question. What -- CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: That I think, you know, what I took away from the meeting and what I have committed to doing is having a direct conversation with the state about that issue. We have, as part of this casino development process, been meeting with all of the state agencies once a month, with the city agencies involved in the process. The Governor's point person on it, Joe Martz, is there. It also includes 73 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation PennDOT and the Department of Environmental Protection and many other agencies. I think that at the next meeting, which will be scheduled within -- I think it's within two weeks? something like within the next two weeks, this will be front and center of that discussion. I think you can legally construct an agreement that includes the parties that likely have condemnation powers, for them to forego the use of those force in order to protect the neighborhoods surrounding casino development. From my perspective, if the Act 71, you know, provision is explicit, it doesn't allow for condemnation powers to authorize casino development. I would see this as very much like what I discussed in connection with tax abatements: We should be able to, you know, to stay 74 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation true to the spirit of the provision. Even if it hasn't anticipated all of the legal fixes, where we didn't have the protections in connection with the elimination of tax abatements at the city level, this settlement agreement, in principle, that I talked about this morning will allow us to get essentially the benefits that the state provided in Act 71 for the city. I think we need to construct an agreement with the state and other condemnation authorities to essentially give us the same level of protections for the neighbors of the SugarHouse Casino.
All right. As you're aware, because you were at that meeting, we had agreed to have some follow-up discussions with the adjacent neighbors and possibly some neighbors on the other side of I-95. Prior to that meeting, can you get us a list of every -- all -- every 75 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation department within the state that has any condemnation powers whatsoever, be it casino-related, be it non-casino- related, 'cause sometimes you may say, Well, that's not related to the casino, but by the way, we think we just happen to need to build a hotel down the street, you know what I mean? CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Absolutely.
So there could be things that may be interpreted as not casino-related but could, in fact, if not for a casino, there was no 16 likelihood that that would ever happen. CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: Right.
So I would like to get a list of every -- every agency that has any authority of condemnation. Prior to the next meeting, I would like to have -- and what -- you said earlier you guys are having a meeting internally, the government officials? 76 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: The state and the city agencies involved in casino development have been meeting on an ongoing basis. In addition to the monthly meetings, we're in direct phone conversation. I intend, after this hearing, based upon your questions, to have certainly a follow-up telephone call with Joe Martz, and we'll see what we can do to prepare in advance of the next joint meeting with the city and state folks, you know, the kind of information you're looking for so that we can have some more definitive answers for the next community meeting.
Okay. Yeah, 'cause in response, the other issue is that I would also like to also have that as a part of that response, in preparation for the community meeting, okay? CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: I certainly will commit to doing that, 77 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Councilman.
All right. Thank you. And just for the record, there was a number of other issues that were brought up at the community meeting, and there was actually one PennDOT-related issue with respects to an agreement that was not complied with, and I forget the and the timeline, but apparently when the I-95 construction happened, there was several commitments to the community that were not adhered to with respects to sound barriers and maintaining the I-95 corridor. And as was said in that meeting, there were several levels of concern raised because the same state that we're talking about now, did not comply with that agreement years ago, and so the likelihood that they will comply with any future agreements was somewhat limited. So that's why the 78 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation level of distrust is quite apparent at that meeting. So we would like to have, you know, the reference of that also, as you indicated. CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: And, Councilman, following that meeting, my office did have several conversations with PennDOT. It's my understanding that the consent decree of several decades back was focused on an area south of this particular neighborhood where the question was raised, so the consent agreement didn't directly address that issue for the Fishtown neighborhoods. On the other hand, we've talked to the PennDOT folks who believe that the kind of changes that are contemplated related to the Girard Avenue interchange probably would trigger federal requirements related to sound barriers, so we're in ongoing conversations with PennDOT about that. 79 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And I should be able to report more information to you and to the community before that next meeting.
Okay. And could you make sure that they understand that that issue, although it came up as a result of casino-related discussions, should have nothing to do with the casino issue in terms of commitment to the neighbors. I mean, I think that that's something that should happen regardless as to whether or not SugarHouse or any other casino happens, 'cause that's clearly an issue with respects to the local residents separate and aside from the casino issue, is to make sure that they understand that we're not asking them to do that as a part of any agreement on a broader casino issue; we're just asking them to do that because they should do it. CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: We've made that point in connection with 80 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation things like grass-cutting and trash pickup. PennDOT acknowledged that there are some challenges in that area, and they're going to work with us --
(Indiscernible.) CITY SOLICITOR DIAZ: And we'll have more feedback on that. I've just been told that the next meeting with the state group is next Tuesday, the 19th, but in advance of that, I'll certainly have those conversations with Joe Martz.
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Diaz. Thank you, Madam President.
Are there any other questions or comments from the members of the committee of these witnesses? (No further questions.)
Thank you. 81 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel consists of Bob Sheldon, Ian Cope, and Terry McKenna.
Good morning. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Council President Verna, Councilman Clarke, and the other members of the Rules Committee. Good morning. My name is Bob Sheldon, and I'm the president the 82 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation SugarHouse Casino. I have with me at the table Ian Cope, our lead architect from Cope-Linder, and Dan Keating from Keating Construction, the developer of our project. Seated behind me are Melanie Shaw, who is helping lead our community relations and diversity efforts; and our attorneys and counsel, Thomas Witt and Chuck Hardy; and Terry McKenna from Keating Construction as well. I would also like to mention that in addition to those here supporting us, there's over 50 people from the Fishtown neighborhood who are here to show support for SugarHouse but were denied access because of the capacity issues of the chambers, and we thank them for being here. Thank you for allowing us to testify today. I know your agenda is full, so I'll keep my comments brief and allow the others with me to detail 83 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation our project. I've previously testified about the legislation that would mandate a 1500-foot buffer around our facility, and I will submit my prior testimony, but I want to provide an overview of our project and why we believe it was selected as the best of five Philadelphia proposals by the State Gaming Control Board. Our site, situated on acres 13 along the Delaware River, is currently 14 neglected and abandoned, our neighbors 15 are primarily industrial and 16 entertainment, and we have plans to 17 provide ample free parking for our 18 employees and our customers to keep 19 cars out of our neighboring residential 20 streets. There is good visibility of 21 our site both from Interstate 95 and 22 the Ben Franklin Bridge. As you may recall, the Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force found that the area where SugarHouse is 84 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation has excellent highway access and that local street congestion would be minimized. The closest major intersection, the Girard Avenue interchange, is already scheduled to be expanded by the Commonwealth, ensuring that traffic will not flow through surrounding neighborhoods. PennDOT has also developed a plan to minimize congestion while this interchange is being built. This was important to us because we don't want traffic congestion anymore than anyone else because it hurts business. It's for all of those reasons and many more that we selected the site. 2 billion in gaming taxes over the first five years of our operation, which will fund wage-tax reductions for all who 85 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation live and work in Philadelphia; $17 million annually in host fees payable to Philadelphia, $5 million of which will go directly to schools; $7 million to $8 million annually in addition to local taxes; And the creation of an estimated 1100 permanent and high- quality jobs at an average wage of $40,000, including benefits. We've worked hard to develop a relationship with our nearest neighbors, and we are proud that so many have backed our proposal. As you will hear from other this morning, we've met repeatedly with our neighbors in order to create a real partnership, and we're humbled by the support that we've found. As part of our commitment to the community, we've committed to donating a million dollars annually to a Special Services District for use at 86 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation their sole discretion once we're fully operational. We have also worked to reach agreement with the city in order to minimize the impact of our casino in the area and ensure the provision of necessary services to those closest. Someone asked why we're seeking to have this zoning designation passed now. The answer is simple: Every day of delay costs SugarHouse Casino significant amounts of money and costs the City of Philadelphia tax revenues.
We need to be able to plan for when construction will begin to ensure our financing, we need to contract with our vendors, and we need to begin to interview and hire staff. It's our goal to reach agreement with the majority of the relevant community groups and would not intend to seek final Council approval until that happens. We want a 87 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation partnership with the community; although we are disappointed that a few community groups have refused to meet with us for ongoing about six months, we remain committed to working with them, but we need to make this important step forward. In closing, we're very proud that our proposal was unanimously approved by the City Planning Commission, and we hope that you will affirm their decision and support our zoning designation as a Commercial Entertainment District. I'd like to introduce Dan Keating now, please.
Madam Chairwoman and members of the Rules Committee, good morning.
Good morning. 88 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
My name is Dan Keating, and I am the Chairman of Keating Construction Company. My firm was founded almost 35 years ago, and we have developed or built some of the premier properties in the Philadelphia region, including the Phoenix across the street, the Hyatt at Penn's Landing, NovaCare Complex, many sections of the Philadelphia International Airport, the Federal Detention Center, Levine Hall at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Convention Center. All in all, we've completed over a thousand projects in the City of Philadelphia, representing tens of thousands of construction and permanent jobs. I'm here today to discuss the development of the SugarHouse project of which we are the lead developer and I am a local partner. When fully built, the SugarHouse Casino will be an 89 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation exciting $550 million casino and entertainment project. The first full phase of development will include space for 3,000 slot machines, dining, over 3,000 free garage parking spaces, and a 6,000- square-foot multi-use event center. Future expansions will include development of a new 500-room hotel, expanded dining options, and a spa. The Pennsylvania Gaming Act requires that applicants must control their site when they apply for a license. Our group analyzed more than a dozen sites over a two-year period, including many of the sites examined in the mayor's Gaming Advisory Task Force sites and sites along the Delaware River and the Navy Yard. We could have selected another site; we selected this one because it is simply the best site in the city to build a casino. (Jeers.)
Having built 90 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation numerous major projects in the city -- (Applause.)
Having built numerous major projects in the city, I am well aware of what it takes to build a successful project. This site was, and is, the best. There are three things that I would draw your attention to today as you consider these bills: The jobs and the taxes that will be generated during construction and the cost of delay. During construction of the first phase, we expect to hire over 1200 union workers and pay tens of millions of dollars in wages and local wage taxes. We are committed to hiring locally and contracting with small and minority-owned firms. I am proud to say that my company has a strong and decades-long reported of inclusion, routinely besting participation 91 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation targets. And with the successful first phase of this project, we would expect to hire an equal number of workers to complete our proposed second phase. In addition to the loss of casino revenues and jobs, there are real costs of delay in the development as well. For a project of this size, we must begin to order certain building materials and equipment that require months of lead time. Our budget was based on costs that will increase if we are delayed. With this committee's approval of zoning, we can begin the schedule and place orders for these materials and make commitments to the firms that will result in a timely and cost-effective delivery of this important project. We believe that delay is bad for the city and we know it is bad for the project. We hope that you oppose the DiCicco bills and support SugarHouse's zoning needs. 92 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And I thank you for listening to me this morning.
Than k you very much. (Shouting from audience members.) (Council President Verna bangs gavel.)
Please, I don't want anything to prevent these hearings from going on, but if your behavior is going to be as it has been, we're going to continue it. So please, let's have respect for each other. Please proceed. Identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I am Ian Cope of Cope-Linder Architects in Philadelphia. Good morning. I've been asked to provide a brief design overview of the proposed 93 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation SugarHouse project and its constituent phases of development. Now, the handout I believe you have before you has been excerpted from the formal plan of development, which is the larger binder, and this was submitted to the Planning Commission in March for their review. As the executive director of the Commission has described, that plan of development is essentially a comprehensive master plan, as is required by the CED ordinance. The full plan of development contains architectural plans in more detail, technical zoning documents, traffic studies, lighting and landscape plans, and narratives. A table of contents from the full plan of development is included in the back of that handout. Before starting with the description of the design, I think it's worth describing the various principles that have guided the development of 94 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation this plan. First and foremost, we viewed the waterfront location as a shared public and private amenity, where our patrons and the public-at-large would have equal to all that the river offers. Second, we want to development a scheme that would promote proper onsite traffic management, with adequate stacking and ample parking to virtually eliminate the potential for any congestion on surrounding streets. Additionally, we wanted to develop a scheme that would permit a seamless future expansion of the project, as is required to be demonstrated to both the Commonwealth and as part of the CED. From an aesthetic standpoint, we wanted to create a compelling and attractive assembly of buildings and landscape spaces in a decidedly contemporary character that we think is 95 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation befitting a modern waterfront. And last, but not least, we wanted a plan that fully ascribed to the city's own planning criteria that was adopted specifically in anticipation of this kind of project; that's the CED ordinance. The first image depicted is of the footprint of Phase 1 and the expansive port-cochere area at the foot of Frankford Avenue as well as the main self-park garage at Shackamaxon Street and landscape promenades that go to and fro along the entire waterfront. It's important to note that these plans are not the first iteration; but, rather, this plan results from many suggestions and design input that we received at countless community meetings and at work sessions with the Planning Commission staff. Their input guided the development of: More useful open space, the 96 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation addition of a large public plaza at the water's edge; Bringing pedestrian entrances out to Delaware Avenue; The enhanced use of public transportation; And other improvements, such as the including of the ferry dock and the green roof. Their input was invaluable in the process. This next image, if you're following along, shows the expansion of the project to the south or to the left of the drawings, with the casino expansion accompanying the development of potentially two new hotel towers and the addition of a large multipurpose event center. Provisions have been made to expand that parking to support this additional development, and this expansion can occur without any interruption to the ongoing operations 97 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation of the casino; or as important to the neighborhoods, any impact on traffic flow into our out of the site. These next two images show what is essentially the basement level of the Phase 1 and in the future expansion. We show you this only because we have gone to great lengths to conceal virtually all of the many back-of-house areas, valet parking and truck traffic and loading docks from any public view from around the entire perimeter of the site.
Where our building does meet the street along Delaware Avenue or along the river, we have lined the perimeter with pedestrian-friendly entrances and retail or restaurants uses. This next image shows the main casino floor, where the action includes much more than slot machines. The gaming area, including the 3,000 machines, is ringed with exciting 98 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation restaurants, lounges, and small- performance venues -- they're depicted in green and yellow -- with the particular focus on the river and street frontage. Pursed slightly above the street and public promenade level, the casino will feature restaurants with open terraces that overlook and frankly activate the river's edge and the public plaza year-round. Parking to support the Phase 1 development will include over 3,000 self-park and valet parking spaces. The following image similarly shows the expansion of that gaming floor in future phases to accommodate the additional hotel towers and the 30,000-foot event center on the upper levels, the full complement of 5,000 slot machines, as well as added restaurant venues along the riverfront, and another complementary pedestrian entrance along Delaware Avenue. At 99 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation full buildout, the project will have in excess of 4500 parking spaces. The three pages that follow represent, perhaps more interesting, three-dimensional views of the proposed massing scale and general character of the project in both the initial phase as well as the future expansion phases. These are consistent with the plans. Although the detailed designs are not yet finalized I think you can begin to get a sense of the scale and extent of green landscaped area devoted to creating a dramatic sense of arrival and a balanced composition of contemporary buildings. We've designed the plan so that there is no back door, with equal billing to Delaware Avenue and the river. You will note the extensive use of windows throughout. The SugarHouse will be anything but a windowless box. These last two images are cut-throughs, which help demonstrate 100 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the broad public promenade areas outside of the building along the insides and along the river, all devoted to creating that important first impression and providing generous dedicated open space for the public to stroll, walk, jog, bike, or enjoy all of the many activities that the SugarHouse will offer. Since initially submitting the plan of development, we have made additional commitments or stipulations to provide a pervious green roof over substantial area of the structure. Also, as the executive director mentioned, we are continuing to work through the lead or green building design process, as is described in the ordinance. These are important environmentally appropriate elements of the design. We believe the CED ordinance 24 was specifically adopted in anticipation of lawful gaming. And 101 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation given the extent of provisions related to public access to the waterfront, it can only be assumed or inferred that this bill was, in fact, envisioned for large waterfront sites such as the SugarHouse. I would like to reiterate that we are confident that our plan, including all of its constituent phases, meets or exceeds all of the city's design criteria and regulations, as prescribed in the CED ordinance with respect to allowable floor area, FAR, parking requirements, setbacks pervious coverage, landscaping, area and height regulations, and, of course, permitted uses, including licensed gaming facilities. Obviously, the Planning Commission staff and commissioners concur.
As an architect and a Philadelphian, I am not aware of any other privately funded project along our waterfront, or the entire city for 102 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that matter, that proposes to develop and maintain such an extraordinary amount of useful public infrastructure improvements and abundant usable public open space as that contemplated for the SugarHouse. For over 30 years, since before the Bicentennial, we have spoken about and purportedly aspired to have an engaging public waterfront with exciting entertainment along portions of its banks. To be sure, there have been some noteworthy developments along the river, but many of these lack critical mass, and some are downright insular, almost gated, communities that only a privileged few can enjoy. So in addition to creating many and important good jobs, I believe that SugarHouse, like no other project, also holds the promise of jump-starting this process by transforming a fenced, dirt site into a vibrant, publicly-accessible waterfront 103 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation destination, just as the CED ordinance 3 clearly envisioned. Thank you for your consideration. )
Thank you very much. The Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Could you briefly describe what is in here in the written agreement and if you've discussed that with anybody; you know, that kind of thing.
Yes, I'd like to answer that for you and ask our counsel, Chuck Hardy, who's been involved in that process. In a number of -- we've met with a number of different groups from the community. Especially over the last few months, there were some local 104 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation residents of Fishtown who approached us and voiced their concern that they felt they weren't being -- that their voices weren't being heard or represented as far as the potential development of the casino in their area. They've communicated with their local neighbors and they've got a membership of well over 200 people that they've formed an association called Fishtown Action. We've met, they've invited us into their living rooms and their homes to talk to their friends and their neighbors. Some of them are for us, not all, but we've certainly had the dialogue with those that oppose us, as we offered to speak with anyone who has -- who would like to meet with us. And basically, that's been our motto. We'll meet with anyone anytime, and we'll come to them. So that's been a very positive process. They had a membership meeting last week. They had close to 300 105 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation people, I believe, in attendance at that meeting, the majority of which were very vocal about their support for the development of the waterfront. We've had discussions with Fishtown Neighbors Association, we've had discussions with the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association, New Kensington, and we've had -- not recently, but in the past, we've had discussions, meetings, and negotiations about a CBA meeting with the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition, which is a composition of the local neighborhood community groups. And, Chuck, you may want to add some --
Mr. Hardy, please identify yourself for the record.
Yes. My name is Chuck Hardy, I am house counsel to the 106 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation SugarHouse Casino. Prior to the time that the SugarHouse was selected by the gaming board to have its application approved, we met with -- separately with Fishtown Neighborhood Association, the New Kensington CDC, the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association, and attended every meeting we were invited to, and requested give-and-take. We were there for several reasons; one had to do with getting an understanding of what concerns the community had and to get some input from the community on our design, which, at that point, was not finalized. In the course of those many meetings, the general consensus of the community was that they would like to have a Special Services District established, which would allow community members to control the expenditure of a significant amount of 107 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation money to mitigate what they perceive might be adverse effects of the SugarHouse opening. In that regard, we prepared a proposed community benefits agreement which outlined the role that the SugarHouse Casino might play, and it was primarily a funding role with regard to a Special Services District. We used as a model which seemed analogous the Special Services District that operates down in the stadium complex area. We submitted that proposed community benefits agreement, and we also circulated to members of the community the constituent documents of the Special Services District down at the stadium to give them an idea of the kinds of problems that they might encounter in terms of deciding what the boundaries would be, who would sit on the board, who make the decisions.
Excuse 108 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation me one second. That was before the selection, you say, or --
These were continuing meetings; we didn't skip a beat with all of that. The thing that -- and we did submit all of these papers, and at that point, we were advised by the three groups who we had spent the most time with -- Fishtown Neighbors, New Kensington CDC and Northern Liberties Neighbors Association -- that they had joined a larger coalition, we were invited to a meeting of the coalition. We attended the meeting of the coalition, and we responded to a multi-page -- it was like an eightset of questions that they had and discussed the possible impacts of the casino and the possible interaction 109 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation between this large new establishment that was coming to the neighborhood and the neighborhood organizations. At that point, we were told that the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition had decided that they needed a respite from discussions with casino developers, that they didn't want to talk with us while they were taking care of whatever internal concerns that they had; and as a result of that, we didn't hear directly back from them for some period of time.
Sir, could you speak just a little closer to the microphone.
Sure. We did hear indirectly back from them through other people who were talking to them, including people in the City Solicitor's Office, that there were some concerns. As a result of that, we made some revisions in the community 110 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation benefits agreement that we had proposed six months before, and we circulated that to the contact person from the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition, who represented nine or ten groups, including the three from our neighborhood, and to other people who were interested. Anyone who asked for it got it. And we are, at this point, open to discussion and available to discuss; and, in fact, have planned to have some further discussions as soon as next Monday with the community groups to finalize these documents.
Just one last question. If you know, Councilman Clarke alluded just earlier to the group that -- I forget exactly what they call themselves, that lives just like two or three blocks to the place. Have you had any direct discussion with them, or have some of those residents been involved in some 111 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation of the other groups? If you know; I don't know if you know.
Okay. We initially attended that meeting with Councilman Clarke and at the request of the residents; they felt they wanted more of a one-on-one discussion with their representative, so we were asked to leave. Prior to that, I had the opportunity to invite I believe it's about ten to twelve members from that community to our office, which is across the street. We have an area set up where we have our plans and our model set up, and one of their neighbors actually offered to invite those people. So I met with probably ten to twelve of them, walked them through the project, and it was a very good discussion, a very healthy one, and, I 112 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation think, very positive. Initially, myself and I have about four people on my executive staff now, between us all, we've knocked on every door in that neighborhood and have probably spoken to 50 percent of the people in the area on numerous occasions. That was earlier in the year, trying to engage those discussions. And, again, we met some positive people, met some people that were opposed; but in any case, we had a good discussion.
And, Councilman Greenlee, you were at that meeting, and I think you will recall how, at the beginning, there was an attempt to limit the people that were at that meeting to those who lived east of I-95; that was not -- ultimately, that didn't happen, and a large number of people from the larger community wound up at that meeting. 113 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation We have spoken to people from the immediate community who were at the meeting who felt that they didn't have an adequate opportunity because it was so dominated by people from outside the area that the focus on that particular smaller area's interests was diffused. But we were there, we were asked to leave, and so we did leave.
Okay. No, I know that part. Yeah, I just didn't know what other things there might have been or that kind of thing. Okay. Thank you, thank you.
You're welcome. The Chair recognizes Councilman Kenney.
Thank you, Madam President. Mr. Sheldon, you had alluded in your testimony that were groups or a group that refuses to meet with you or has refused to meet with you. Do you 114 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation know who those groups are? and have they given you a reason why they refuse to meet?
Well, it would be Fishtown Neighbors Association, Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association, and the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition, to be specific. There may be a couple of others.
Yes, that's correct. They refused to meet and negotiate further on the CBA.
So I'm clear in the timeline: They met with you originally and then had to cut off meetings?
Yes. The reason they gave us was that they -- the immediate community groups had formed a 115 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation coalition with groups from South Philadelphia and other areas further away from the SugarHouse, and that that group had agreed, as a policy, that all of them would follow, that they would not negotiate with the casinos or have discussions with them until they were ready to do so, and they have not yet told us they were ready to do so. We understand that some of the community groups may be reconsidering that, but at this point, their official position -- Fishtown Neighbors and Northern Liberties that they are sticking to the agreement they made with the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition. You're going to be hearing from them later; you can find out from them.
At least since January, I believe, was our last 116 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation official meeting.
Any other questions or comments from members of the committee? (No further questions.)
Mr. McPherson? MR. McPHERSON: Our next witness is William Schwartz. (Applause.) (Jeers.)
Mr. McPherson, would you please call up the next panel, and maybe they could 117 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation sit in the front. MR. McPHERSON: The next panel is Steve Wexler, David Odell, Shawn Rairigh, and A.J. Thompson. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good morning. Please identify yourself for the record.
May it please the committee, my name is William G. Schwartz, an attorney with the law firm of Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel, and I represent the Philadelphia Entertainment Development Partners, LP, a successful licensee for Category 2 gaming license under the State Gaming Act and owner of 1499 South Christopher Columbus Boulevard, otherwise known as Foxwoods.
Thank you, 118 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Madam President. I have a question prior to the commencement of this testimony. Is there anyone else here from Foxwoods today?
Is there a reason why there is no one else here from Foxwoods besides yourself? And no -- no insult to you, but it seems that when we get testimony from SugarHouse, we get the president and everyone else that has any -- can answer any question, and when we hear from Foxwoods, we usually only hear from you. And I have no problem hearing from you; it's just that it would seem to me it would be in their best interests to engage, as SugarHouse has engaged, with this process. And is there a reason why they choose not to come here at all?
Well, I don't 119 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation think that's necessarily true, and the reason is --
-- is that we're not pushing our development before this community. What we're hearing is opposition to contra casino legislation that we believe is illegal. It's a legal position, and it merely requires a statement before you as to that legal position.
For the record, I find it very helpful to be able to engage with the proposed casino operators on a one-to-one basis as opposed to through their lawyer --
And if you want to -- if you could please send those sentiments back to the people of Foxwoods --
-- 'cause I think they need to get their selves in here.
Certainly. Thank you. I'm here today to offer testimony in opposition to billions 070006, 070008, 070010, 070011, 070012, and, in particular, Bills No. 070391 and 070264 that would prohibit the city from allowing the construction of gaming facilities within 1500 feet of various uses, the Bill No. 070264 that proposes an extension of the North Delaware Avenue controls ordinance 17 southward to Oregon Avenue that would prohibit both new restaurants, et cetera, as well as expansion of existing facilities. All of the proposed bills under discussion are both unwise and illegal. These bills are really nothing more than an attempt to exclude gaming from the City of Philadelphia. 121 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation If these bills pass, they will have the effect of excluding casinos as permitted zoning use in Philadelphia. As a result, Philadelphia will lose the much-needed revenue, tax relief, and jobs, which gaming will provide. In general, the proposed code amendments contained in all of these bills would most likely be viewed by a court of review as invalid and illegal. In particular, I will first address Bill 070391 that prohibits gaming. This proposed code amendment is contrary to the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The state legislature, through the Gaming Act, gave the Gaming Control Board exclusive control over the location of gaming establishments. If the proposed code changes are enacted, the Gaming Control Board's exclusive jurisdiction to site casinos could be illegally usurped since the Commonwealth granted the power to site the casinos to the 122 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Gaming Control Board and not to the city. In addition to being contrary to the Gaming Act, it is beyond the city's powers to enact the amendments in the bills proposed before this committee. The City of Philadelphia is an entity of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and only has the powers granted to it by state statute, which can be limited or withdrawn by another statute. The state granted the city to power to control the size, location, and use of land; however, the state legislature has limited the city's power to do so in certain situations, like exempting property owned or used by State-related entities from city zoning and land-use requirements. Here, the state has enacted a statute which gives the Gaming Control Board exclusive control over the site of gaming establishments, and the 123 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation city's general authority over those land-use decisions has been preempted. Thus, the proposed amendments would be invalid because they exceed the powers granted to the city. This proposed gaming prohibition is patently illegal as an ultra vires act by this Council. Additionally, prohibiting a casino within 1500 feet of a residence, school, or place of worship would limit Council's ability to approve zoning legislation for just about the entire city. Originally, the distance separation called for in an earlier version of Bill 070391 was 1,000 feet, or more than three football fields, away. However, in order to target my client's property, the distance separation was increased to 1500 feet, or five football fields, away, clearly over the top. This prohibition would certainly be considered by any court to 124 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation be de facto and de jure exclusionary zoning, which the Supreme Court has said violates both United States and Pennsylvania constitutions. If such a decision is found by the courts, then, as all of you know, gaming would be allowed anywhere in the city because of the exclusionary nature of the proposed bill. The previous history of Bill 12 070391 says it all. This is the same anti-casino ordinance that was proposed by a citizens' petition for a referendum on gaming. That petition was thrown out by Common Pleas Court, and the referendum ordinance passed by this Council was preliminarily enjoined by the Supreme Court.
As before, City Planning voted to oppose this proposed ordinance. Notwithstanding all of that, this Council continues its Don Quixote tilting at windmills. As to Bill 070264, the proposed extension of North Delaware 125 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Avenue controls southward to Oregon Avenue, this is just another illegal attempt by this Council to obtain a veto power over the Gaming Board's licensing decision, a power to which this Council is not legally entitled. , prohibit accessory uses -- what it can't do directly, prohibit the main use of casino gaming. At the recent City Planning Commission Board meeting on these two bills, which the board voted to oppose, Mr. Kramer of City Planning staff advised the board that the only apparently reason is to stop Foxwoods. That clearly constitutes special legislation, which is unconstitutional. )
And this is just more proof of the unconstitutionality of this bill. In short, all of these bills seek to delay or derail the millions of dollars of benefits and thousands of jobs that gaming will bring to Philadelphia. Rather than continue to spend resources on protracted legal battles, we should be seeking to advance the creation of jobs and revenue, which gaming will bring to Philadelphia. We respectfully request that 127 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the committee vote to oppose bills that I've already mentioned. As stated in earlier testimony before this committee, the battle of siting should not be with us but rather with the Commonwealth and the Gaming Board. Thank you.
Than k you, Mr. Schwartz. Are there any questions from members of the committee? (No questions.)
I would like to ask Mr. McPherson to please call up the panel number 5. They could sit on the side chairs. 128 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation MR. McPHERSON: Charlotte Levins, Lauren Griffith, Donna Tomlinson, Joe Rafter.
You're seated at the witness table, are you not?
Okay , you're there. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
My name is 129 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Stephen A. Wexler. Good morning and thank you to members of Council and the president.
I'm sorry. You're going to have to pull the microphone closer to you.
I am a member of the Central Delaware Riverfront Advisory Group, which is charged with the task of developing a civic vision for the seven-mile stretch of the Central Delaware waterfront. A resolution was passed by the advisory group at its June 4, 2007, meeting and expressed the advisory group's dissatisfaction with the manner in which the Philadelphia City Planning Commission reviewed and approved the SugarHouse Casino development plan on May 22nd. The resolution criticized the Planning Commission for failing to provide adequate public notice before the May 22nd meeting and for the Commission's apparent disregard for the 130 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation work of the Central Delaware planning process in its casino plan review and approval process. The advisory group asserts that the Planning Commission, in not using the civic values, principles and design guidelines developed through an ongoing and robust civic engagement process as criteria in its casino review process, has ignored the work authorized by Mayor Street in his executive order of October 12, 2006, creating the Central Delaware Waterfront Initiative. Furthermore, the advisory group believes that the actions of the Planning Commission constitute a significant missed opportunity to integrate valuable citizen feedback to improve waterfront development proposals. The advisory group is further concerned that the Central Delaware riverfront planning process appears to 131 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation have been conducted on a parallel, but intentionally separate, course from the casino design review process. As you know, Penn Praxis was invited by the city in October of 2006 to lead the development of the civic vision for the waterfront. Since that time, in collaboration with the Penn Project on Civic Engagement, we have worked with many thousands of Philadelphians to help shape citizen values and principles to guide planning and development along the central waterfront. These civic values and principles serve as the basis of a set of urban design guidelines that call for a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environment. The goal is to create a vision that protects the public interests, encourages quality development, and balances with the working port. In facilitating this civic 132 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation process, we have remained neutral on the issue of land use, including the sites of the proposed casinos. We have focused instead on guidelines for development and infrastructure investment that will support a variety of development initiatives, whether casinos are built on these riverfront sites or not. The advisory group has adhered to the civic principles that emerge from the public process, principles which provide a strong civic foundation for the work, and foster the urban character that makes Philadelphia so special. The commitment to all Philadelphians has been to conduct an open and transparent public planning process, and the Central Delaware Advisory Group continues to maintain clear and frequent communication about the project's progress with the public. The advisory group has worked hard over the past seven months to 133 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation bring multiple riverfront stakeholders together to seek common ground around shared values for the future of the city. The advisory group has attempted to host a civic dialogue on the tensions and trade-offs associated with development, growth, and change. We realize the development of the waterfront holds great promise for the future of Philadelphia; and at the same time, we know that neighborhood change is a matter which must be addressed with great sensitivity. The prospect of casinos on the waterfront has dominated much of the civic dialogue and has been a source of tension throughout the process.
The urban design guidelines and planning principles that we have developed are the direct result of this important public dialogue; and as such, they reflect the will of the people of Philadelphia. The advisory group is greatly 134 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation distressed by the Planning Commission's apparent lack of these principles and urges Council to use these tools to review and judge the merits of all waterfront development. Philadelphia must begin to establish strong development rules that protect the public good while encouraging quality private development along the part of our waterfront which is dense, historic, and urban. The advisory group believes that no development should move forward until we have an open and public process that explains decisions and respectfully acknowledges disagreement. We look forward to bringing the values, principles, and design guidelines developed in this process to that discussion. Thank you very much.
You're welcome. (Applause.) 135 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Who will be testifying next? Please identify yourself for the record.
J. Thompson, and I live in Fishtown. Despite being the vice president of the Fishtown Neighborhood Association, I will be giving my testimony on behalf of my own thoughts and observations from a year-and-a-half in this process. And I will say that I've never seen -- I'm only 30, but I can imagine that no issue or anything has divided our community as much as this, perhaps maybe when the Phillies and the 'As were town and who to root for; I don't know. But I will say that the one sign -- you know, there are signs on both sides of this issue here. The sign that means the most to me is the one that says "We Live Here," because there are a lot of the people who live very close to this, and Darryl alluded 136 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation to this earlier -- Councilman Clarke alluded to this earlier in his testimony about a meeting that he and Councilman Greenlee attended. My original testimony today was to say that Council has not been informed to the extent that it would need to to vote on today's bills. Since they have been tabled, I want to say why. We are not at a point where you, who are going to vote on this, can feel comfortable that all of the issues and concerns of the residents who live immediately adjacent to this facility have been addressed. The issues that will affect my community going forward for the next 30 to 50 years are still on the table. Solicitor Diaz has what looks to be a pretty substantive deal negotiated with the operator; however, he admitted that it is not final, and since it isn't final, we still have 137 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation work to do. A lot of conversation during this process has focused on the mayor's task force. The Mayor's task force operated in a vacuum before the sites were selected. We now have a site selected, and it's up to Council to vote on this issue. And I respectfully request that before you come back from September -- before you come back in September that you appoint a commission, a task force for Council specifically, so that you can be fully informed about every issue that's going to affect this development pro or con; because unfortunately, at this point, it does not exist. And we have three months before you come back, and this will likely be on the table in a session in September, and we'll all be back in the room. But I want to feel comfortable 138 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that at that point, everybody on this panel and everybody in the larger Council can say with certainty that all of the stones have been unturned, every issue that the operator has to be address has been addressed from a community standpoint, every issue that the city has to address is addressed from a community standpoint, and every issue that the state needs to address is addressed from that community's standpoint. So. I respectfully request -- I don't know if it takes legislation. It might just take volunteer time from your staff and yourselves to substantively get involved with our community to hammer out issues. You know, something has been made about the Fishtown Neighborhood Association's decision not to talk to the operator. And, unfortunately, you know, or fortunately, for us, we do exist in a democracy, and our 139 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation membership voted to do that. And, you know, just as you guys have to listen to your constituents, and when they vote for something, you have to go that way. We ask that -- we stopped talking to the operator because there were a lot of things going on. Things have changed a little bit. This legislation being introduced has changed the playing field a little bit. Now that it's been tabled, we still have time. I don't want to tell my daughter when she's 15 years old that Daddy and his friends could have protected the neighborhood a little bit better but we just went down the shore three months and really didn't talk to Council about things that we really could have put in place before this was done.
Now, this could come back in September, and you guys could table it 140 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation again, and the casino doesn't get built for a long time or ever, but we need to take this time to substantively look at this issue so that you're satisfied, because if I was sitting where you're sitting -- and I think Darrell at the meeting and Bill, to some extent -- Councilman Greenlee and Councilman Clarke to some extent realized that there are things that need to be talked about, and there are things that we need to pay attention to, and there are deals that are not done. To rush this now, without looking at this, would be a mistake, and it's something that we would pay for for a long time.
Did I understand you to say that you're not willing to meet with the CEO, as he indicated?
Personally? I -- I think it's time that we meet with the operators. 141 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
There is a growing feeling within the community that these issues are not being addressed. Certainly you don't want to do that without -- with under -- by undermining the efforts of people who are trying to stop this and who everybody should respect, because they, at their essence, care about their own community. But legislation is on the table that needs to be looked at and discussed. I'm confident that if Council would put together a task force that there would be participation from groups that might not be participating in the process right now, and I can assure you that I will advocate as much as I can and bring people to the table to do so -- not with the stated 142 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation intention of legalizing this, but with the stated intention of, if it does happen, that all of the issues that need to be addressed are addressed 'cause they are not there; they're just floating in the winds.
We will certainly put your request under consideration. Thank you.
It has to -- I just want to add that we can't wait; it needs to be done immediately.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. The Chair recognizes Councilman Greenlee.
Yeah, just one quick thing. Not to belabor this, but, Mr. Thompson, would you agree that if there are other groups in Fishtown meeting with the SugarHouse people that it doesn't serve the purpose of the opponents at least not to have some 143 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation discussion?
I mean, I agree that it's time to talk, and I understand that people are speaking with SugarHouse. I mean, I don't -- I don't see how not addressing these issues serves our purposes, and I think it's time that we do that. And I'm asking that Council sort of take the reins over -- stop referring to the mayor's task force that was created a year ago. Let's write a report about something that's been chosen and that is in front of you right now.
Okay. But everybody should be willing to participate in that if that happens, right? (Indiscernible; parties talking over each other.)
I know at the meeting the other week, you kind of said that, so I'm -- you know, I 144 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation guess I'm just trying to get the that on record that discussion just makes sense, and I think that's what you said. Okay.
But -- but -- but I will add that there was substantive reasons that were good reasons for tabling discussion because, you know, despite the Gaming Board's decision in December, nothing has necessarily really happened until Councilman Ramos introduced the bill. You know, there was a referendum that you all guys all voted for to put on the ballot that was or that was not going to be on the ballot. There were issues that needed to be decided. And in that context, perhaps negotiation made sense; perhaps it didn't. But our organization and other organizations have to follow the lead of the people who belong to them and the people who come and vote. And at 145 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that time, that is what happened. Now, we do have meetings coming up, and I think if you guys would take the lead -- create a table that people need to get at; that's what I'm asking you to do.
Than k you very much. Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon. My name is Shawn Rairigh. Today I speak to you as a resident of Fishtown and also as a professional city planner; I've been work for several years in a private architectural and planning firm in downtown Philadelphia, as well as a former intern of the City Planning Commission, but I'm mostly speaking to you as a founding of NABR, N-A-B-R, Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront. 146 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation This is a community-driven planning group that started about a year-and-a-half ago largely in response to the development pressure facing the North Delaware waterfront. As you may know, many of the taller buildings have already passed zoning, and we're seeing that. So we -- a group of people came together and said it's time that there is a more community-driven planning process to decide the future for the waterfront instead of individual haphazard proposals and projects. Obviously, once the casinos came along, this became a large issue too. I just want to remind Council of the uniqueness of the SugarHouse site, that this is the only neighborhood in the entire city where there is dense urban fabric on both sides of I-95. Other neighborhoods have dense urban fabric on one side or 147 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the other, but not on both sides as Fishtown has. A casino of this size and this scale, in my professional opinion as a planner and as a neighbor's opinion, is completely inappropriate and actually destructive. 3 million square feet is proposed by Sugarhouse; that is larger than the King of Prussia Mall on a site about a fourth of the size. The number of slots included in the SugarHouse plan totaling 5,000 at full buildout is larger than any casino in Las Vegas. The largest casino in Las Vegas, the MGM Grand, has 2900 slots; granted, it also has table games. The casino floor at the MGM Grand is about 170,000 square feet. The casino floor proposed for the SugarHouse -- and I don't have specifics -- but it is well over a 148 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation hundred thousand square feet. Obviously, the size of a garage is not an appropriate -- a 4,000-car garage is not appropriate for a neighborhood that is faced across the street with two- and three-story rowhouses. And the 40,000 visitors a day that SugarHouse estimated in its preliminary report to the Gaming Control Board equals what a sold-out Phillies game would be. Now, they estimated that for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, so this is the equivalent of a sold-out Phillies game, except no 17 transit. 5. So much more traffic than a sold-out Phillies game, and we're contemplating maybe putting two of these on the riverfront. So if it's not supposed to -- and furthermore, as Steve mentioned, 149 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation many of the principles that have come out of the Central Delaware Waterfront plan, of which I am NABR's representative to the advisory committee, are not being followed by this site plan. Buildings should be built up to the street, the massing should be broken down, there should be a large variety of mix of uses within buildings and within the site itself. These principles are not being followed by the SugarHouse site development. So what should go on the site instead of a casino? NABR, a few months ago, held our own volunteer-given planning charrette for the two casino sites, and if maybe somebody could get this to Council. These are the results of the plan charrette. Take a look through there. You will quickly see -- well, first about the process. We invited anybody who wanted to come to come and spend four hours with us in an open 150 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation planning format. The only thing not allowed were casinos, because we felt that that needed to be addressed -- what should be on these sites if the casinos aren't going to be there. Approximately 45 to 50 members of the public came, including about eight design professionals.
We spent four house coming up with ideas, designs. I'll never forget the one lady from South Philadelphia who said, You know what we need? We need a big park. The western side of South Philadelphia has FDR Park, the western side of Center City and North Philadelphia has Fairmount Park; we don't have a park. And she went off on her own and drew out the whole site as a park and what should be in there. We compiled all of the suggestions into what you see, the document before you. Obviously, you can see from that that the community, 151 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation or at least the folks who came to our meeting, are not anti-development. They strongly support development; they just don't support it of the scale and the scope and the size of the SugarHouse Casino. Just as a quick estimate, we looked over at what the plans could hold -- and you'll hear more about this later, I believe. On the northern site, talking over 440,000 square feet of residential; 70,000 square feet of commercial space, including a 5-acre park; a southern site, we estimate, could hold something like 800,000 square feet of residential, 100 townhouses, 80,000 square feet of commercial space, a couple of 200-car garages, as well as an 8-acre park, that being twice the size of Rittenhouse Square. This can all fit on the site. Instead, what there being proposed is 152 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation single-use casino developments, single building, large garages attached to them. If you have any questions, I'll gladly take them.
How close is the nearest residential area from Foxwoods?
SugarHouse is less than 200. It's across Delaware Avenue, Delaware Avenue being about a hundred feet wide, and then there's about -- you know, sidewalks and about 153 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation a hundred feet back to Allen Street -- or is it Richmond? Allen Street. And there are two-story and three-story rowhouses along Allen street.
Than k you are there any questions from members of the committee? (No questions.)
Okay. Our next panel, please. (Applause.) (Witnesses come forward.) MR. McPHERSON: The next panel after this will be Pat Gillespie, Mike Fera, and Wade Stevens, and a member of the Sprinkler Fitters Union.
Okay . Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good morning. My name is David Odell. I'm representing 154 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the Transit Working Group of the Green Party of Philadelphia. I myself reside in the 2nd Council District. The working group has been studying casinos from a transportation perspective. As many of you know, Philadelphia's transportation infrastructure is an important component of the city's emergency response system, and it is the relationship between casino traffic and emergency preparedness that I would like to address briefly here. Since Hurricane Katrina, the city has been focusing on management scenarios for evacuating large numbers of people from Philadelphia or into the City from outlying areas and providing them with food, shelter, medical care, and supplies. Many citizens groups have focused on the negative influence of casino traffic on their local neighborhoods. Our working group has 155 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation been look looking at the impact of casinos on the ability of our infrastructure to handle citywide movements of large groups of the population in an emergency situation. This involves our major arteries, particularly Corridors 4 and 3; that is, Interstates 95, 76, and 676. Traffic advisories for these corridors regularly report delays long backups and slow-going conditions, even without common, evermore-frequent aggravating factors such as crashes, lane restriction for road construction, police activities, inclement weather, and major sporting or cultural events. Traffic on local roads that provide access to our major egress and ingress routes is even worse. On any given day, police, fire, and rescue vehicles often must inch their way down congested streets and through blocked intersections. While the City of Philadelphia 156 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation is thus actively preparing to manage a possible large-scale evacuation, the transportation infrastructure on which that response would be based is unable to provide fast, efficient movement even under normal, everyday conditions. There are crucial components of casino traffic the planners have not yet clearly analyzed, including: First, the impact of Columbus Boulevard and local street congestion on interstate through-traffic; and, second, the compounding effect of locating two casinos a mere three miles apart from each other, a fraction of the length of a typical interstate backup, and the risk of thereby turning I-95 into a massive parking lot along the riverfront corridor. Enough information is available, however, to allow a fairly clear picture of what we can expect. The proposed gaming facilities would cause a dramatic rise in traffic 157 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation volume. The lure of up to 11,000 new onsite parking spaces and lack of convenient transit access will be a deterrent to non-automotive alternatives. A projected 80 percent and more of gamblers will use cars, two-thirds of them will be non-Philadelphians, and up to 85 percent will use the interstate to access the gaming facilities. Two 5,000 slot casinos will increase already-congested traffic in Corridor 4 by 34 to 55 percent over a 24-hour period on weekdays, and more than double the corridor volume on Saturdays. Even without the confluence of casino peak traffic and rush-hour traffic, casino activity will increase the number of accidents and result in deteriorating conditions up and down the Delaware. That is a far cry from the safe and orderly movement of vehicles envisioned in the city's 158 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation emergency preparedness report. There are many reasons to oppose the construction of casinos, but certainly a concern for the basic safe movement of our populace, particularly during emergencies both small and large, should rank very high among them. Hopefully, simple common sense will prevail. This City Council should put the safety of the Philadelphians first and say no to both Foxwoods and SugarHouse Casinos.
Please identify yourself for the record and proceed.
Good afternoon, Madam President. My name is Donna Tomlinson, and I have been a resident of Fishtown for 52 years. Thank you today for holding this hearing on this important topic of 159 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation casino zoning and allowing me to testify. I have been volunteering in my community and in Philadelphia for over 30 years with various organizations: St. Laurentius Church and School, the Fishtown Recreation Center, Hallahan High School, PAL golf tournaments, and the Philadelphia Veterans Multiservice and Education Center. I am a founding member of Fishtown Neighbors and a founding member of Fishtown Action. The members of Fishtown Action are not paid political activists who move from city to city, causing a fight. They are our neighbors, our friends, and our families who feel that the development of the SugarHouse Casino opens the door for more development on the riverfront. We do not want another gated-condo community. Fishtown Action is a group of Fishtown residents whose mission is to provide the Fishtown community and 160 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation residents nearby with the opportunity and forum to obtain information about the SugarHouse Casino via transparent and constructive dialogue. To date, the membership of Fishtown Action is over 300 residents from Fishtown and Port Richmond. Our membership is growing every day. Fishtown Action is, by far, the largest community-membership organization in Fishtown. At a recent Fishtown Action meeting, our membership overwhelmingly voted to approve a resolution to support the construction of the SugarHouse Casino at its present location. Our members are not naive. They know there are issues that need to be addressed, and Fishtown Action is giving them that forum. Our members see a bright future for our neighborhood and the city once the SugarHouse Casino is built. 161 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I would like to thank all of the Fishtown residents in the other room for coming out today, and I am asking you to vote in favor of the Commercial Entertainment District so that this important project can begin. Thank you. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
Okay. Good afternoon, Council President Verna and members of Council. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify today for this important legislation involving the SugarHouse Casino project. My name is Charlotte Levins. I was born and raised in Fishtown, where I continue to live today. I learned to read, write, and even speak a little Polish at St. Laurentius 162 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation School and learned to play basketball with the Fishtown Athletic Club. I learned the value of community service by doing volunteer health outreach with Episcopal Hospital, and I am currently enrolled full-time at Temple University and work part-time in the hospital industry. Ever since I can remember, the Delaware riverfront in Fishtown has been inaccessible largely due to trash and rodent infestation. Unfortunately, these lots have also served as a prime spot for murder, one of which claimed the life of an innocent friend. In recent years, the only development that has occurred north of Spring Garden has been nightclubs that force customers to park in neighborhood streets and high-rise condominiums that bar access to the river. The SugarHouse project is the only real development that will clean up a blighted site, provide access to the 163 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Delaware riverfront, and offer benefits to the surrounding community. The community benefits agreement is especially important to a neighborhood like Fishtown, where resources for community programs are extremely limited. All of the large employers, such as the old Jack Frost and American Can Company, have left the communities and taken good jobs with them. Sponsorships for community programs are fewer, and families are less able to pay a $60 registration fee to enroll their child in a sports or arts program. While this might seem nominal to many wage-earners in this room, these are precious dollars to many Fishtown families. Tax revenues from the SugarHouse will also help the city provide desperately-needed financial resources to schools, police and fire departments, and other programs important to our neighborhoods. 164 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I feel very fortunate to have grown up in Fishtown and will always value the lessons learned from my coaches, teachers, neighbors, friends, and parents who always found the time to help out. At the same time, I see the difficulties that young Fishtowners will face if their neighborhood is deprived of an opportunity to welcome a responsible employer into their neighborhood. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
I hope that you will support this proposed legislation that will enable the SugarHouse project to move without further delay. And thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify before you today. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
Just very quickly, please, either of you. 165 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation You may have -- just to put on the record, about how many residents of Fishtown would you say are in your organization? You may have said that and I may have missed it. I'm sorry.
Okay. And they're all residents of Fishtown, you say?
Most of them are residents of Fishtown; there's a few from Port Richmond. But I would say 300 are from Fishtown, yes, absolutely.
And I actually have the documents. Everyone has to fill out a membership form, and I have those documents. If you'd ever like to see them, I'd be happy to bring them to you.
Thank you, ma'am. 166 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good morning. My name is Lauren Griffith. I have been a resident of Fishtown for all 13 years of my life. I have been involved 14 in many community activities and 15 organization in my short life span. 16 And to the best of my knowledge, those 17 activities and organizations have done 18 their best to try to provide a better 19 neighborhood and community for the residents of Fishtown. Personally, I feel this is what SugarHouse Casino will bring to the neighborhood. As a college student, I do not look forward to the slots and casino aspect of SugarHouse, but the 167 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation restaurants and access to the waterfront that has been denied for all almost years of my life. Instead of 5 having to drive to the northeast or 6 Center City for a place to meet up with 7 friends, I would love to have a place 8 close to home that I can enjoy the 9 company of my friends and my 10 neighborhood. 11 I hate driving down Delaware 12 Avenue to work and staring at a vacant 13 lot. As a member of the Fishtown 14 Action committee, I feel that the 15 benefits of SugarHouse are willing to 16 offer will impact the community 17 greatly, aiding the residents and 18 future residents to come. 19 Thank you. 20 (Applause.) (Cheers.)
Good morning. My name is Joe Rafter. I live in Northern Liberties. I've owned and operated a restaurant for 13 years in Northern 168 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Liberties. I am pro-development, I am pro-jobs, I am for the SugarHouse in my backyard. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
If I could add one thing. I was born and raised in Fishtown, and it struck me odd that a man named Dan Hunter, an anti-casino leader, was a holding sign that says "Fishtown Doesn't Want the SugarHouse." Mr. Hunter does not live in Fishtown; he lives in West Philly. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
And I believe that too many people who do not live in Fishtown have been claiming to speak for us, and they do not. Again, I am for the SugarHouse in my back yard. Thank you. (Applause.) (Cheers.) (Witnesses come forward.) 169 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Good afternoon. Welcome. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon, Madam President. My name is Pat Gillespie. I'm the Business Manager of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
I'm here -- with me to my immediate left is Wade Stevens, Business Manager of Labors District Council and President of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
John Kane, who is the newly-elected business manager of the Plumbers 690, replacing Ed Keenan. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
And last, but 170 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation not least, Gene Blagman, representing the FOP. We, of course, are for anything any project that's going to generate jobs. We at the building trades are -- we encourage -- (Individuals shouting from audience.)
When we get silent, you'll continue. I think we're being very, very rude. Again, I am asking that we respect the people that are testifying and we respect each other. The people in the back of the room -- (Council President Verna bangs gavel.)
The people in the back of the room, if you're going to have a personal conversation, do so in the corridor. 171 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Please proceed.
Thank you, Madam President. We're here and we appreciate City Council's allowing us an opportunity to be heard. One of the things that this project will provide for us are job opportunities, which we desperately need. And not that gambling is a panacea; I mean, that's just the state of affairs that we are in. But the revenues that this will generate, you are well aware, will help us finance our construction of our Convention Center expansion project. The jobs that this -- the job opportunities that this presents for our communities could very well help us with the recidivist criminals that are -- that a number of building trade members happen to be, and we try to get them job opportunities so that they don't go back to that kind of lifestyle. The construction industry 172 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation is one of the few industries that -- that are -- is open to that. So it's not as if it's -- it's a panacea for everything, but it will certainly help in our communities to provide job opportunities for people who are desperately in need them. And we applaud the -- the dialogue that goes on. Even though it's heated and spirited, it's important for the community to make sure that this casino that's going to posited in their neighborhood is a good neighbor. And I think I've heard testimony today, and I've heard it in the past, that they are willing to do that, they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, that they want -- they want to participate. And I -- I would never want to stifle those kinds of conversations between the community because there are people in Fishtown who have to -- who 173 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation have to live with that, and they -- they want to make sure that it's a good neighbor. And I just -- I'm pleased that the quality of people at that SugarHouse Casino -- Dan Keating is a wonderful developer and a great general contractor. Bloom is a great developer from Chicago. Some of the -- some of the noted Philadelphia aspect -- people in this deal are -- are salt-of-the- earth kind of people who say and do what they mean. So the detractors, you can be against -- okay, that's fine. But if you look at the sub -- sum and substance of what these people are offering, they're offering hope for a community that -- that we desperately need. So thank you very much.
Than k you, Mr. Gillespie. (Applause.) 174 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Cheers.)
Madam President, I appreciate the opportunity to address this community to speak in support of the SugarHouse Casinos. My name is Wade Stevens. I represent roughly 10,000 construction laborers from two local unions housed right inside of Philadelphia -- Labors Local 332 and Labors Local 357. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
And as you can hear, Madam President, my members are here, and they're here because they are concerned taxpayers of the City of Philadelphia. They are here -- (Applause.)
They are here because their children attend the public schools in the City of Philadelphia. They are here because 175 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation their children have been gunned down on the streets of the City of Philadelphia. And all of these things that I mentioned, they are here because they Pay city wage taxes to the City of Philadelphia. They have a vested interest in what goes on in terms of economic development in this city. And they have addressed the leadership of their local union to come down and to speak before this esteemed body to express to you that the members, their families, and their children desperately need the work opportunities, they desperately need the revenues that will fund the Police Department, the School District, and help minimize city wage and approve the quality of life in this city for our members and all of Philadelphia. And that's not to deminimize [sic] the actions of the groups from Fishtown. And as Mr. Gillespie said, 176 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation we welcome the public debate. I think it's -- I think it's -- it's good to have people from both sides speak on an issue. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, this is a Philadelphia initiative, and it's the entire city that will benefit. And to sneeze at funding of the Police Department and to sneeze at not willing to upgrade our schools to provide better buildings, books for our children to learn from, and to minimize city wage tax, we feel, would be short-sighted. So we implore City Council to please move forward with the SugarHouse development. The SugarHouse Casino will bring a lot of things to the table to benefit the entire city, even the Fishtown neighborhood. And I would like to thank you for the opportunity.
Than 177 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation k you. (Applause.) (Cheers.)
Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Madam President. My name is John Kane, Business Manager, Financial Secretary of Plumbers Local 690. I am here to speak on behalf of my members that are unable to be here tonight. I roughly represent over members 2250 members, 1500 of them who live in the City of Philadelphia. We were at our union meeting recently, about two weeks ago. I made a recommendation that we back SugarHouse Casino, and it was unanimously decided for yes, we are backing SugarHouse Casino. Thank you.
Than k you. 178 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Applause.) (Cheers.)
I'm Gene Blagman. I represent the Fraternal Order of Police. We have about 14,000 members active and retired. I just wanted to say that casino revenue has been factored into the city budget over the next five years. Any delay in that money coming in is going to impact every city worker and our workers in particular. It will impact us in contract negotiations as well as equipment and personnel. Any delay -- and I sympathize completely with the people that are against casinos; there's no good location for casinos that I can think of. There merely is the fact that they -- the state has legislated that 179 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation they're going to exist, and that's -- it's one of those things we're going to have to live with, and if we live with it with cooperation from the Casino -- at least if we're with the casino, we may be able to make them good neighbors if we cooperate fully. If we don't, and delay this, I don't see where it's going to benefit the city on any level. Thank you.
Any questions or comments from members of the committee of these witnesses?
Oh, 180 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I'm sorry. The Chair recognizes Councilman DiCicco.
It's not easy being short. Thank you. The question is to all of the gentlemen up here, and I appreciate your testimony. The issue here, for the most part, has to do with location. If SugarHouse were able to find a new location, you're not -- basically what I'm asking you is, you're not wed to the site; you're just wed to the fact that you want to see this development happen because it will create jobs; is that a fair assessment?
Mr. Council -- Councilman DiCicco, we are in favor of the casino...
... wherever it is sited. The situation, as we 181 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation understand it, the people who are putting up the 54-odd million dollars for the permit and who are willing the share the 56 cents of every dollar that is gambled with the state and the local community, this is the site that they selected.
Well, but they're not willing to do it; it's the law that says that they have to give the 56 cents up. Let's be fair about that.
If they had to choose, they would rather be someplace in the area of where Atlantic City is --
I 182 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation understand. We understand that. Again, I just wanted to make sure that we understand that there is a sentiment, and there are some people, and I respect them -- and I've said this publicly -- who are anti-casino in general, and they just believe that it's not the right thing to do. But there are those who understand that gaming is coming, and it's just a question of location again, so I wanted to make sure that we understand each other, that it's not necessarily anti-development; it's the site that has the biggest concern here.
Yeah. Councilman DiCicco, we come up against the not-in-my-backyard syndrome with every development. I mean -- and you're well aware of that. Everybody wants to build a building. I mean -- and -- and I guess my -- my point is, is that here comes an entity that should be and wants to be a good 183 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation neighbor, all right? And they're trying to be that good neighbor.
Well, not to be disrespectful. There's not a developer that I've been encountered with in twelve years in Council -- and I've been involved with a number of developers that never came and said the same thing, that we want to be good neighbors. No one comes in saying, "We want to be a bad neighbor." But we understand the issue.
And it's -- it's the dialogue that goes on now, before they get started, before they get their permits, that ensure -- that you ensure that they are -- in fact, become a good neighbor.
Than k you. Thank you all. Thank you. 184 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Applause.) (Cheers.) MR. McPHERSON: The next panel is Katie Recker, Paul Boni, Jennifer Lewis, Tully Speaker. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon, Council President Verna, Councilman Clarke, Councilman DiCicco, and anybody who is looking on the live feed. My name is Katie Recker. I'm an attorney in Philadelphia, and I live in Fishtown. I'm a member of the Fishtown Neighborhood Association and I live a few blocks from the proposed SugarHouse site, in Riverside, and I want to be sure that you understand the distinction between Riverside and the rest of Fishtown. 185 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Riverside is a 300-year-old residential historic neighborhood, and as Councilman Clarke said earlier, Riverside is Ground Zero. It is the part of Fishtown that will bear the brunt of any development along the river, and it is the part of Fishtown that will be negatively and forever impacted by SugarHouse. I'm here to talk today about two things -- neighborhood destruction versus zoning protection; this is the issue before you today. Neighborhood destruction is guaranteed by Councilman Ramos's bills. I respectfully ask you: Please oppose them. There is no need to rush the process, and I appreciate that you have tabled consideration or voting on these bills until the summer recess is completed. Everyone here realizes that it was the state who gave us the casinos and the PGBC and SugarHouse who chose 186 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the locations, but it is City Council who has the ability to cure the problems that placing SugarHouse in Riverside will result in. Zoning protection, zoning protection is the cure. Support for Councilman DiCicco's 1500-foot buffer is zoning protection. You have the power. The Supreme Court restored zoning power to you after the legislature tried to take it away. No part of any residential neighborhood should be destroyed by development. Our zoning code is supposed to prevent that. The worst part of Councilman Ramos's bills that are before you here today is the one that seeks to eliminate the North Delaware Avenue special district control. " It outlaws venues that provide entertainment of guests and patrons 187 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation along Delaware Avenue north of Spring Garden. This is a very important piece of legislation. In the 1990s, nightclubs sprang up on North Delaware Avenue. These nightclubs plagued Fishtown and Northern Liberties. The clubs put profits from selling alcohol above the public safety and the rights of the nearby residents. Among other things, alcohol fueled disputes; the disputes resulted in fistfights; the fistfights spilled over into our streets. They led to crime, they led to shootings, and they led to murder. In short, the nightclubs brought dangerous and violent behavior which landed on our doorsteps and kicked in our doors. Recognizing that this situation should not be permitted to continue, City Council, in its wisdom, ended it in 2002. City Council wisely recognized the primacy of the health, 188 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation safety, and welfare of our neighborhoods. City Council passed 1624. With that legislation, City Council recognized what the state, the PGCB, and SugarHouse refuse to recognize: That outsized bars and out-of-control nighttime activity do not belong close to homes. What do the outlawed nightclubs and SugarHouse have in common? They serve a lot of alcohol. , the way it did with the nightclubs; instead, SugarHouse will be serving alcohol 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, with 6 21 separate liquor license. 22 And if that were not bad 23 enough, SugarHouse will be able to give 24 alcohol away for free. Free alcohol makes gamblers forget how much money 189 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation they're losing in the casino. To make matters worse, the scale of SugarHouse is 100 times the size of a handful of nightclubs that wee on North Delaware Avenue. Upon completion, SugarHouse will exceed millions of square feet.
They will accommodate thousands more patrons than the nightclubs on Delaware Avenue ever did, and they will be drinking free alcohol. This can only mean if you give the green light for this development to move forward, the negative impact that we experienced prior to 2002 will be exponentially worse. In preparation for today, I looked at each of the special district controls in the Zoning Code, and I found something interesting: Lots of neighborhoods have specific zoning that addresses the problems and issues that are unique to the neighborhood, just like 1624. 190 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I saw special district controls for Old City, Rittenhouse Row, South Street and Headhouse Square, Chinatown, East Falls, Manayunk. In all, I counted at least ten special district controls for neighborhoods in the city. Most of this legislation has a similar introduction. " These laws also aim to preserve the historic quality of neighborhoods, protect cultural amenities, and enhance the esthetics of the places in which people live. In other words, they serve to protect the fabric of the communities. To accomplish these goals, the special district control laws limit everything from drug stores and grocery 191 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation stores to delis, nail salons and tanning salons, dry cleaners, and shoe shops. Why? " And I have nothing against these types of businesses; I'm simply quoting from the laws that City Council has already passed, and I'm very much in favor of protecting the historic quality of a neighborhood. My point to you today is that the North Delaware Avenue special district control, 1624, is in place to protect the neighborhood from something so much more grave than the way the neighborhood looks; that control is the only piece of legislation, the only one in the Zoning Code, that specifically says it seeks to protect residents from crime, murders and shootings, public intoxation, and vandalism. It's in the 192 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation statute. It's the only one that identifies loss of life as one of the reasons that it is in place. If you plan to keep intact the special district controls that protect neighborhoods from too many nail salons, please keep intact the special district control that protects my neighborhood from violent, drunken behavior. 1624 is a real statute, serves a real purpose. Councilman Ramos wants you to rush to undo our protection. Rushing is not good public policy. I beg of you, please do not undo this zoning protection. It is a law borne of experience, and it's an experience that we don't want to repeat. Please, I ask you, vote in favor of Councilman DiCicco's buffer. We need it here in Fishtown. And thank you very much for letting me speak today. )
Okay. Hello. My name is Jennifer Lewis. I am the president of the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association. So I thank you, Madam President and members of the committee, for this opportunity to speak. We are members of the Delaware River -- and I actually have copies of this testimony here too if someone wants it. We are members of the Delaware River Neighborhood Alliance and the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition. With the proximity of SugarHouse Casino being located half within Northern Liberties and half within Fishtown, I am here today with you with my fellow civic association coalition members to 194 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation oppose the SugarHouse site location; and in specific, the two bills before you today that have been introduced by Councilman Ramos. The NLNA is a 30-year-old civic association for the Northern Liberties neighborhoods. The NLNA represents a community that stretches from the Delaware riverfront to Sixth Street and from Callowhill Street to Girard Avenue. Our neighborhood has seen tremendous increase in population since 2000, and it's projected to more than double to over 9,000 people by 2009. We've embraced positive development and we have supported all manner of commercial proposals, including entertainment and liquor uses. In my capacity as president of the NLNA, I represent people who have varied opinions on casino development in the city. Some are very much against casino development anywhere in 195 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the city and in the state, while others are very pro-casino for entertainment or job opportunities, and many are somewhere in between. But the message that has been clearly heard since the first mention of casinos being sited near our community was that the majority of our neighbors do not want to live next to a casino. As a community, we have maintained a consistent, strong majority that says that this location of SugarHouse Casino is wrong. Residents, even those who feel the casinos are a net benefit, do not wish to live next to a casino; and even more importantly, they do not want to raise a family next to a casino. Over the past few years, we have seen an increase in families with young children who continue to stay in the neighborhood after their children reach school ages. Casinos will 196 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation disrupt and destroy this diversity and sense of community that we have built over the years in our neighborhood. Hence, I am also here to represent the often-overlooked fact of opposition to Councilman Ramos's bills, that of parents with young children who are at home and are unable to attend a lot of these meetings or events. In addition to being the president of the NLNA, I am a mother. I have a two-year-old son and another child on the way. There are arguments for and against casinos, but the one I hold on to is just this: How do you raise a family in the shadow of a casino? How do you raise a family in the shadow of a casino? Families do not want to hear their young children are being hit by increased traffic that will inevitably spill into the neighborhood. Families do not want to fear that their children will be affected by nuisance 197 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation establishments that will inevitably spring up all around the casino. Families do not want to fear the increased crime that casinos will bring. These are 24-hour gambling and entertainment complexes, each with up to 5,000 slot machines, a half a dozen new liquor licenses, and 4,000 parking spots. The increased crime, drunkenness, and addiction that casino gambling will bring into our neighborhoods is unacceptable. It is for that reason that we support a 1500-foot buffer between casinos and residential neighborhoods. This is a reasonable standard that would not remove casinos from the city, not take away jobs, not take away tax dollars, but would push them from being immediately close to neighborhoods and families.
We all know that the process by which casinos have come was broken. 198 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation There was no meaningful public input, which is why there is such a major resistance remaining to these poorly chosen sites. We are, therefore, asking that you assist us by stopping the Ramos bills here and now and fully supporting and all reasonable minimal standards on casino development proposed by Councilman DiCicco. I know the decision before you is difficult. Jobs and tax dollars are critical, but at what cost? Help us protect our children, families, and communities. We are the people who will be here in the long term, and we need your support. Thank you.
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record. 199 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Good afternoon, President Verna and gentlemen of the Council. My name is Tully Speaker. I am a four-time president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association and a continuing member of the board. I an here today to speak to several points. First, in March, the Logan Square Neighborhood Association was contacted by the coalition of which you have heard many times. The coalition asked that Logan Square support its position. The board heard the arguments for and against, the board listened to those, deliberated, and voted unanimously to join the coalition in its opposition to the development of casinos as proposed and to include the distance limit, which has been alluded to a number of times. Secondly, Fredrick Murphy, Fredrick Murphy of Temple University, who is a members of the Center City 200 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Neighborhood Association, will later today testify before you, speaking to the economic impact of the casino and their developments. He will say that, no doubt, building a casino, as in the building of any large building, generates a large number of jobs in the construction trades, but his analysis of the economics goes beyond that and points out in the 16-page document, which he provided me a copy of, points out that in the long run, once the construction is over, the casinos represent a net loss to the city and to the state. He has a very compelling argument; he will tell you about that. I have read it, I feel it is compelling, and I recommend it to you. And while that is a large document and a complex one, I noticed also in Monday's Wall Street Journal, on Page B5, a less-than-one6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation article summarising the economic impact of casinos across the country as they have evolved from -- initially from Las Vegas to the states in which they 6 are now legalized. 7 The argument in this article 8 is very simple: Where does the money 9 come from, and where does the money go? 10 And the summary of this 11 article, which I will make available to 12 you in a number of photocopies, the 13 summary of it is that the money does 14 not balance the cost to the city, to the state; the money available through taxes simply does not balance the cost to the city and state. It is not a question of emotion; it is a question simply of business, it is a simply business question. Casinos do not make money for the city or the state, and the more casinos there are, the less the benefits accrue from them. Thank you for your attention. 202 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Paul Boni. I'm an attorney. I live in the Society Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. I'm also a member of the Society Hill Civic Association, which is a founding member along with other neighborhood 15 associations in the DRNA, which is the 16 Delaware River Neighborhood Alliance. 17 I'm also outside counsel to Casino-Free 18 Philadelphia. 19 So with all of those hats, I 20 guess I'll just speak for myself, 21 although I think all of those entities 22 would probably agree with what I'm 23 saying. 24 It's seemed like a very long time, but it's only been about five 203 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation months ever since we've gotten away from the divide-and-conquer, which has been the state's strategy. We've learned so much. We've spoken to national experts and we've learned more about this industry than we -- than we care to. I hope that all of the members of the Rules Committee can be here for the next panel, where we will have two professors speaking about the economic impact from their own experience, their own study, research, and analysis about convenience gambling in urban settings. And what they have explained to us, and what they will explain to you, is that proximity matters. We have all decided -- the city has decided that a standard needs to be set and that a 1500-foot buffer is supported by 95 percent of Philadelphians; we know these things. We've also learned how to unify ourselves and our groups, our 204 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation coalitions, and how to create a political movement and a political mandate. You have supported us each and every step of the way; and for that, we are grateful. But our job is not finished. Today, we can begin to finish our work. What has changed in the past five months? I think a lot has changed, and it's important to recognize that. We now realized fully what the state has done to us. We realize the terrible politics that has brought us Act 71. We realize the terrible process that was employed by the Gaming Control Board. And we realize the terrible implication of putting these massive slot parlors within walking distance of hundreds of thousands of rowhome residents. And I fear that we might actually not realize that terrible implication and that it may be worse 205 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation than we all think. Back when the CED was enacted by this City Council, we did not know these things. Even the political climate in Harrisburg was different; it has now changed. About one third of the state legislature has changed over due to the pay raise. Our most powerful state senator does not have the power he once had. Our governor is now scared and desperate about casinos in Philadelphia. We have an expose in Philadelphia Magazine. We have a definitive article in the Wall Street Journal. We know better now. This is not just some deal that will bring some extra traffic to some neighborhoods. We now know that this is a bad economic deal for the City of Philadelphia, and that because of these casinos at these locations, we will lose jobs, and we will lose tax revenue. That's what the next panel 206 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation will explain, and we hope you can be here to hear that. For the longest time, we have all blamed Harrisburg: They're the ones that delivered this to our doorstep. But now the responsibility is here, in our City Hall. You are now being asked not by our District Councilperson, who knows more about this issue than anyone in City Council but by a lame-duck at-large Councilman to enact by-right zoning for SugarHouse. The least we could do is ask SugarHouse to go to the Zoning Board for a variance. We can't blame that issue on Harrisburg; that's Philadelphia's issue. We have now seen a process play itself out at the Planning Commission that was so secretive, it's embarrassing that it takes place in our city.
And for not standing up to it, many have asked the executive director 207 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation to resign. The process had -- the public -- excuse me. The public had less than hours' notice of the 6 Planning Commission hearing at which 7 SugarHouse presented. Even at the 8 hearing, we were not provided with a 9 copy of the plans. 10 That was the lack of meaning. 11 I mean, you know, they say you're 12 entitled to public input. We're 13 entitled to more than public input; 14 we're entitled to meaningful 15 opportunity to provide public input. 16 And still, this Planning 17 Commission voted unanimously and 18 against the law, by the way, to 19 transmit the plans to the City Council. 20 That was not Harrisburg's fault. 21 So we can't blame Harrisburg 22 for the choices that we have on this 23 day. The responsibility is here, in 24 our city, but so is the opportunities. And as we're here today 208 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation together, we can do good. Why is today the day to take a stand? I have some reasons. Because over the past five months, we've learned just how much the state is trying to victimize us and you. We've learned that what might actually appeared then to have been innocuous and ugly projects are actually quite damaging to our economy, and now we have the opportunity to do something about it. The most important thing that you can do today in this intensely political debate that's playing itself out from here to Harrisburg is to send a message. Today, that is your role. The message should have two parts. First, send a message that you stand with the people by unanimously voting the 1500-foot buffer out of committee either now or as soon as you can. Let us pass that legislation and make it law. 209 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Second, send a message that you are not assisting those who seek to damage our city, our neighborhoods, our people. And you can do that by unanimously deciding not to vote the Ramos bills out of committee today or ever. If the Governor wants to change the law on you, let him try. If the members of the Supreme Court want to force this upon us, let them try. You can do this. We want you to do this. We will carry on the fight ourselves in the courthouse and in the state house. We simply need your support. This is not a done deal, not at these locations. For ourselves, our families, and our neighborhoods, we will never stop fighting, whatever it takes. Thank you.
Than k you. 210 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation (Applause.) (Cheers.) (Standing ovation.)
Than k you very much. Our next witnesses? MR. McPHERSON: The panel consists of Jeff Rush, Robert Goodman, Fred Murphy. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. Are you going to testify, sir? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.
Who's testifying, all of you? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.
Fine . Thank you. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon, Madam President and members of the Rules Committee, Councilman DiCicco. My name is Jeff Rush. I am a 211 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation three-term president and current president of Queen Village Neighborhood Association. I am here today representing the Delaware River Neighborhood Alliance, and it is on their behalf that I speak today. Who is the DRNA? It is a -- an alliance of civics who 10 individually went back to their boards 11 and communities for support in this 12 alliance and, as such, are speaking for 13 residents and business owners from 14 South Philadelphia through Fishtown, 15 across Center City to Logan Square. 16 Behind me, you can see 17 membership of DRNA. They're here 18 today. 19 We are united in opposition to 20 the siting of casinos in our 21 neighborhoods. We are not anti-casino, 22 and that is not the message that I'm 23 here to deliver today. We understand 24 that there are economic benefits, at least as suggested by the people who 212 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation support casino development. Rather, we are here to examine an issue of significance, precedence, consistency, and fairness, which is this: Last week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit objecting to the casino sitings filed by Society Hill Civic Association, Queen Village Neighborhood Association, Pennsport Civic Association and Whitman Council, four long-established civics representing thousands of taxpaying residents and business owners in the 1st District. Without law or logic, the court ruled that we had no 17 standing, and refused to hear our arguments. Now, Councilman Ramos, with all respect, has introduced Bills 56 and 58 asking for favorable zoning for the proposed SugarHouse Casino. I voted in the May primary. When I went into the voting booth, I saw two names running for 1st District 213 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Council and voted for Councilman DiCicco. I did not see Councilman Ramos's name in the place where the 1st District vote was to be taken. Councilman Ramos does not represent --
Uh, so am I, sir. With all respect, Councilman Ramos does not represent the 1st District and very clearly does not represent the interests of the 250,000 residents living, working, and paying taxes in the 1st District. This past spring, Council took the unprecedented and courageous action of passing bills three times unanimously to reaffirm our city's right to home rule. Collectively you took the first step to usher in a new 214 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation year of empowerment. Councilman Ramos's bills are a part of an unrelenting and systemic erosion of your power and our rights. The process that brought the gaming industry two blocks from our neighborhoods was secretive and unconstitutional. And, frankly, Councilman Ramos's bills are part and parcel of that same repressive dynamic. Are we a city of the first class or a colony of the state? All members of the Rules Committee should refuse to send Bills 56 and 58 to the floor of Council now and in September. Further, Council should ensure passage of Councilman DiCicco's bill, which would prevent casinos from being located within 1500 feet of our neighborhoods. Once again, we ask Council to do the right thing. You have the opportunity to provide the necessary leadership to authenticate a process 215 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation for economic development which does not threaten to cause great harm to our neighborhoods of the river wards or, in fact, any neighborhood in the great City of Philadelphia. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Thank you, Madam President. For the kind gentleman that just gave his presentation that I respect, I respect all the opinions of every single person that has testified 216 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation here this morning. I've been here since the very, very, very beginning. I just want to remind him he should have noted, if he wanted to be totally honest, that I voted three times -- not once, not twice, but thrice against, against that Foxwoods site, voted for the two other relevant bills, and I still haven't voted on this. So, you know, and I believe that the law says that I don't leave here till January. And it is obviously by this hearing that this Councilman is very much engaged in this process and will continue to be engaged in this process. And I do, in fact, respect by the way I have voted as well to the concerns that you gentlemen have brought up here and the fine people that have come before you here this morning. Thank you. 217 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
I also represent people that are now expressing, expressing support for that site. My position has always been not to give keys. And my good Councilman DiCicco -- he was my councilman until just a few years ago know -- knows that my position has been very clear. As long as there are outstanding community issues surrounding casinos, no one should be given the keys to operate no casinos. I have not budged from that position. Well, you know, hey. It's very clear where I stand at.
Than k you. Our next witness, please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony. PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Thank you 218 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and good afternoon.
Good afternoon. PROFESSOR GOODMAN: My name is Robert Goodman and I'm here from Amherst, Massachusetts, where I'm a professor at Hampshire College, where I teach economic development, urban planning, and environmental design. I was the director of a two-year study funded by the Ford Foundation, conducted at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, that looked at gambling throughout the United States, looking at what the costs and benefits of that expansion were. And so we focus particularly on economic issues. And when we looked at even social issues, we also -- we always looked at what the economic component of that was. I was also the director of the United States Gambling Research 219 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Institute, and I helped both senators, Senator Richard Luger, the Republican from Indiana, and the late Senator Paul Simon, Democrat from Illinois, to set up the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. So I'd like to, this morning, talk about some of the research findings, but I would particularly like to focus on locational issues. There have been broad impacts of gambling that I could talk about, and I will site some reference to that, but I'd like to, if I can, focus on the issue at hand, which has to do with the location of a casino 200 feet from a residential neighborhood. And I'd also like to add that I don't have a moral issue with gambling. I gamble myself, I've played in poker tournaments. I'm not as good as I'd like to be, but I've done pretty well at times. And I -- I have to comment -- 220 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I can't help but commenting. I believe it was the counsel that I heard this morning from Foxwoods Casinos that said that this City Council was tilting at windmills, if I had that correctly, that this is a game that's all over, and why are you bothering, I don't even know why you're having this hearing. ) PROFESSOR GOODMAN: You can either take that statement by the counsel as a condemnation or praise; I'll leave it up to you to make your own decision about that. I also -- I noticed that the union people have left, and I wish they 221 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation hadn't because I want to say that I come from a union family, and I probably wouldn't have gone to college if both of my parents didn't have union jobs. So jobs is a very important issue. And, in fact, the research I'm engaged in now has to do with the automotive industry and the problems of automobile jobs both going south and leaving the country altogether. So I'm very well aware of the issues that people in unions face and workers in general face. And, clearly, a community like this being offered the number of jobs in this casino is something that has to be taken quite seriously. On the other hand, I think one has to look at the other side of it: What does -- how does it impact other jobs? The one basic thing we've found in our research is that there are 222 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation two different types of gambling businesses. " That's what happens in Las Vegas: People come to Las Vegas on average for about four days, not only spend their money in the casinos but in all sorts of other activities, and so it's a major benefit there. In fact, in the State of Nevada, 40 percent of the budget for the State of Nevada comes out of gambling and gambling-related businesses. " It's basically gambling directed to local people. And what you hope is that a number of local people will gamble more. And the argument that I've heard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 223 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and even in other states is that all of your gambling dollars are going down to Atlantic City and other places. If you could only keep them here, everything's going to be a lot better: You would be able to use that money for schools and a host of other things that are very important to you. That's not how it works, and so I want to make that clear.
This is not a static phenomenon where there's a group of people, you know, thousands of people who get on buses or in cars, go down to Atlantic City, come back to Philadelphia and other parts of Pennsylvania. What will happen with a casino here is that a large group of those people that are gambling in places like Atlantic City will remain in Philadelphia, they will gamble here. At the same time, large numbers of people who either gambled very little or didn't gamble at all will now begin 224 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation to gamble. And so you now have a larger group of people in the Philadelphia area that will gamble. What happens? Well, you've heard, I'm sure, many times the whole issue of problem gambling. We were not -- it's a tragic circumstance for many people, and I don't want to belittle that. On the other hand, we were interested in the economic costs of that, so what we looked at is what happens not to the gambler but to the non-gambler as a result of the person who gets in trouble with their gambling? The situation is very similar to what happens with smoking. If you recall, the attorneys general of most of the states in the United States threatened to sue the tobacco company. The tobacco company, worried that they might not win that case in court, settled that case for, if I have my 225 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation numbers correct -- and I haven't looked at it lately, but it's roughly a $365 billion settlement over a 25-year period. Now, the reason they settled was because these costs were not just to the smokers but to other people in a city and state that have to pay for the problems created by the smokers. In the case of smokers, it's basically health-care costs. In the case of problem gamblers, it's not just health-care costs, it's not just the cost of counseling people. The typical problem gambler doesn't pay his or her debts. They tend to go bankrupt. They tend -- if you have a contract with a problem gambler, you might not get paid. They tend to embezzle money at work, they tend to write bad checks, they tend to commit outright robbery, fraud on their credit cards, on their insurance, a whole host of other things. 226 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation So now you have money being lost to other people, and you're picking up the criminal justice cost of the problem gambler. We calculated, based on a number of studies which have been confirmed since we did this research, that the average cost of a problem gambler to a state per year is $13,200. Now, you come back and say, Well, not that many people are problem-gamblers. The gambling industry says it's somewhere between and percent of the adult population. We've seen figures higher than that. The highest we've seen is in Louisiana -- 7 percent of the adult population. Now, we've also seen it in states that have done studies. How much more problem gambling are you going to have? The argument for the casinos is that you already have these problem gamblers, so why -- what 227 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation difference does it make? They're going to gamble in Atlantic City or somewhere else; we might as well get the revenue, we're going to have to pay for the costs anyway. That's not what happens. The number of problem gamblers will increase. I'm not the only one saying that. Every researcher who's looked at it says it. Even the gambling industry's researchers say that. The only argument they have is, they say it's not as high as some other people claim. But there is a direct correlation between the amount of gambling that's available and the amount of problem gamblers you're going to have and the costs to non-gamblers, the costs to citizens in the state and in the city. How does that refer back to location? How does this refer back to the idea of having a casino within 200 228 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation feet of a community? Well, the answer I suggest is quite obvious.
The closer you look -- every study shows this. The closer you locate a casino to a population, the more problem gamblers you will have. And I will give you very long odds on any bet you want to take that the closer you locate a casino to people, the more gambling you'll have. Now, there's -- this has been a controversial thing in other parts of country, and other legislators, other politicians have faced this issue. When gambling was introduced in Iowa and other states, the same issue came up, we don't want it, it was a clear message to the casino industry. We don't want it near residential neighborhoods. Where did they put the casinos? They put them on boats. That was the reason they put them on boats, to keep them away from residential communities. The casinos agreed to it. 229 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Now, I'm not suggesting you put a casino on a boat here on your river, but that is an option; it's been done all over the country. Now, there are other options, and I am sure that if you give the casinos -- if you turn it down, they will find other places to locate it, and you will get the jobs, and you will get the revenues. So you're actually right now -- and I want to emphasize this point. You're in the strongest position you will ever be in. This City Council will never be in a stronger position once this casino is built. And the reason I say that is, the casino wants your approval. And they will make a lot of money and they're willing to spend a lot of money. I've seen communities get much better deals in terms of the revenue and other things than I've ever heard here in Philadelphia. So I can 230 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation guarantee you they will find a way to put a casino at least 1500 feet or more. So I -- so take that 1500-foot figure. And I said to myself, you know, we've been researching casinos all over the country. Is there anyplace that we've seen where there are casinos within 200 feet of a community, a residential community? I haven't seen it. And I was -- I was curious. Just this week I said, well, maybe -- you know, I know they put it in town in Detroit, and I said, they legalized three casinos in Detroit, and maybe that's a city that had it. So I called up people at Wayne State in Detroit, I spoke to people in the City Planning Department. I said, Could you tell me about where your -- they have three casinos. Where are they located? Where's the closest to a residential community? They said the 231 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation closest one was a half a mile away; they did not want it near a residential community. So you're experimenting here in a way that I've never seen a city experiment. If you put casinos within 200 feet, you will have the best experiment in the country for how it could impact a community. No other city has what you have. Detroit doesn't have it and most other cities. The only places you'll go is where there's tourists there. You'll go to Nevada and see it. So that's something you need to consider, the location. The other question -- there are a number of questions that come up that I think is important. One of the -- one of the issues I've heard here is that money will go to schools. Well, we've seen that happen in other parts of country. In fact, we saw a document that was a confidential 232 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation document from the casino industry. And one of the things they said in terms of promoting casinos and how you get a casino into a community is, one of the first things you do is, you go to the education people, and you argue that if we have gambling, they will get more money. And so I went and I talked to education people, and I said, Well, now you've had it in your community, what do you think? Let me give you some examples. " I said why? " I don't know what you're getting here as a percentage of your budget.
I would have to guess it's 233 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation probably going to be small, but you could tell me about it 'cause you know it better than I do. Here's the other thing that will happen in the future. And, again, this is something that was told to me by people in education departments. After they had the casinos, after they had money coming to education from gambling dollars, it was very hard for them to pass bond issues, it was very hard for them to increase appropriations at the state houses for education. Why? Because legislators would go back and say, You now have a dedicated stream of money out of gambling. We have other places that we need to put this money -- prisons, other things. So this is the kind of future you're likely to see. I'd like to say one other thing, and this is in hindsight, and I 234 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation think -- you know, I'm -- I want to reinforce this point. Even though we've seen some really negative impacts, you have a situation here where you've been dealt a bad hand, and I realize this. This is not something you initiated; this is something the state initiated. And in poker, it's a little bit -- if you're playing Texas Hold 'Em, it's a little bit about getting, you know, two high pair, and you think you're going to get a full house, and you're betting into this thing. And all of a sudden, you get busted. You don't have a full house, but you still have two high pair. And that's the situation I think you're in: You've got a good hand right now; you'll never have a better hand. You'll get from the casinos what you want to get now. Once they're in place, it's not going to happen. I guarantee it. I can tell 235 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation you places all over the country where it's changed. So whether you like gambling or not, whether you think it's being forced down your throat or not, you've got a good hand now, and I suggest that you play it. I want to end on one note in terms of what the future is likely to bring. In the research we did, we saw the highest amount ever in the history of the states we investigated -- and we looked at all of the states -- ever spent for lobbying by any single industry than was paid for by the gambling industry. No industry came close. Once this is in place, you will see a lot of gambling dollars, lobbying dollars, in the state house. You will see a revolving door of legislators moving between gambling and political positions. That's happened in those states. 236 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation So I only suggest that you be very careful and that you do the best you can with what you've got. I thank you very much.
Than k you very much. Your testimony was very interesting. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Brown.
Thank you very much. A couple of questions on the clarity of the points that you made. You said that no industry has spent as much money on lobbyists as the gambling industry; does this exclude the NRA? PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Yes, it does. The NRA doesn't come into a state and say, We'd like to set up, you know, a huge gun club in the middle of your city and lobby for that. 237 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And so what we're looking at is, these industries -- here's the basic idea -- these are monopoly industries. They're state-sanctioned monopolies; no one can compete with them once they have these licenses. Let me give you an example of what happened in the State of Ohio, which I think is very telling. In the State of Ohio, the legislature did exactly the opposite of what the legislature in Pennsylvania did. They rejected gambling, but here's why. The people that lined up against it -- the State Movie Theater Association, the State Restaurant Association, the State Bar Association -- not the lawyers but the people who represent the drinking establishments -- the State Chamber of Commerce. Now in this town, I believe the Chamber of Commerce is in favor of it; this is one of the few places I've ever seen the Chamber of Commerce -- 238 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Now, the reason they were against it -- the movie theaters, the restaurants, et cetera -- they realized that when you have convenience gambling, it's a zero sum game. People only have a certain amount of money to spend on their discretionary activities. If it's not going to spent in a restaurant or a movie theater or a sports event or whatever, it's going into the gambling industry, and so you're just shifting these dollars around. And that's why they rejected it in Ohio. The other thing that I'd like to mention that I haven't mentioned before is about crime. I looked at -- I looked at two cities, because in the research one of the cities we looked at before was East St. Louis. I don't know if you're familiar with East St. Louis; it's a very poor city. In East St. Louis, gambling 239 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation was going to be a panacea. All of the people -- the legislators, the gambling industry -- told them it would turn the city around. So I said, Let me see what actually happened. I looked at East St. Louis and compared it to Philadelphia, just some statistics on crime. You may be familiar with this. I know that murders have increased here recently and I know that's been a problem, but over the last six years, 2000 to 2005, the crime rate has actually gone down in Philadelphia on most activities. I mean, I actually have the figures here. In East St. Louis, it's just the opposite. I mean, it's extraordinary, just comparing the two, what the differences were. I'll just -- if you'll give me one moment, I'd just like to give you a couple of figures on what's happened. I won't bore you, I promise, with a lot of 240 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation statistics. But let me just -- this is East St. Louis; this was the poster boy for casinos. Things were supposed to change -- more revenues, jobs, crime was supposed to go down, et cetera. Robberies in the last six years have gone up 42 percent; assaults, 7 percent; thefts, 8 percent; arson, 65 percent. All of those categories in Philadelphia, over the last six years, have gone down. Robberies, down 4 percent; assaults, down 9 percent; burglaries, down 9 percent; thefts, down percent, et cetera. 18 Now, I said before that this 19 would be a grand experiment, this will be an experiment. You put casinos within 200 feet of a residential community and then come back in six years and look at those figures. I hope if you do it, you don't wind up in the same situation that East St. Louis 241 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation has wound up in. And I say this because you have something that East St.
Louis didn't have: You have their experience, you have the experience of communities all over this country. And I suggest, before you go ahead, you benefit from those experiences. )
I would like to lean on your expertise one more time. PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Sure.
If you could pick one or two lessons that could, or should, be learned from Atlantic City, what would it be? PROFESSOR GOODMAN: From East St. Louis?
Atlantic City. PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Oh, I'm sorry. Atlantic City. Well, bear with me a minute; I 242 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation want to tell you a little bit about Atlantic City. The one lesson overall is that the only constant -- the only things that stay the same is that things will change.
Things will...? PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Change. That the regulations will change, the demands made on gambling will change. The history of gambling is that when you introduce a gambling venture, the revenues go up. We went back to the 1930s, actually, and looked at this over a very long period of time, looking at the lotteries and the casinos. Revenues go up and then they drop. Look at what happens to lotteries as one example, but I can point it out to casinos as well. The revenues go up, and then you can't keep people gambling at the same level. The people you can keep gambling are the 243 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation problem gamblers. It turns out, all of the research that's been done, anywhere from to 55 percent of revenues in a 6 casino come from problem gamblers. 7 They're a small percentage of the 8 population, but they gamble a lot of 9 money. The casinos need them. Their 10 profits are dependent on them. 11 That's why they want to locate 12 in areas where there are a lot of 13 people. The more you can get people to 14 gamble, the more problem gamblers 15 you'll have. 16 Now, they'll throw a lot of 17 money at addiction studies, they'll 18 throw a lot of money at counseling, at 19 Gamblers Anonymous, all of that, but 20 they need those people to keep 21 gambling. 22 Now, in Atlantic City, here's 23 what happened, and this is just four 24 years after they opened casinos in 25 Atlantic City. 244 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation They lost one third of their retail businesses. They lost 40 percent of their restaurants, gone. Now, how can a restaurant in Philadelphia compete with a restaurant at a casino? The casinos make their money on gambling; they don't make their money on restaurants. They'll comp you, they'll give you -- if you gamble enough, you'll get free meals, you'll get, you know, discounted liquor. What happened in Louisiana, by the way -- and here's another lesson. You will have -- and I predict this will happen to you 'cause it's happened in other states. You will have the restaurant people, the bar people coming back to you and saying, Look, we can't compete; would you please let us have slot machines at the restaurants? Will you please -- (Laughter.) PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Now, it's 245 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation not funny. It happened. Go to Louisiana. Now the governor of Louisiana is in federal prison right now, but it -- because he was giving out licenses a little too liberally for a certain amount of money. But what happened in Louisiana, in addition to legalizing ten casinos, the restaurant people came and said, We can't compete. So what did they do? They legalized slot machines at the restaurants. The bars came in and said, We can't compete. They legalized slot machines at the bars. Not only did they come in, the truck stops, you know, where people get out and have a cup of coffee and sometimes a meal, buy gasoline? They said, We can't compete. They have slot machines at truck stops in Louisiana. Louisiana has the highest rate of problem gambling in the country, 246 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation percent of the adult population. And the reason they have it is because they saturated the state with gambling enterprises. So the one lesson is: Be very careful, minimize it as much as you can, and try to keep control of it. Write into the legislation that they're not going to be able to change the takeout rate, for example.
Change the...? PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Takeout rate. That's how much your city gets and the state gets.
Oh, okay. PROFESSOR GOODMAN: Here's what happened to race tracks. This is all over the country. Cities and states used to depend on race tracks for revenues. The attendance at race tracks has gone down. The race tracks go back to the legislatures and say, 247 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Look, our revenues go down, but we've got a lot of people working for us. Race tracks, in my state, pay that much to the state. In fact, the race tracks are asking the state to subsidize the maintenance of the race tracks. So the dynamic changes -- you will have a whole different political constituency. You'll now have people working in these industries. If the takeout goes down, if the revenues don't come in, they're going to -- the takeout to them; that is, to the casino, the profit. They're going to come and say, Well, we'd like to keep these people working, but if you don't reduce your takeout, we're going to have to fire some people. So be careful.
Thank you for your testimony. ) PROFESSOR MURPHY: Good 248 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation afternoon. I'm Fred Murphy. I'm a professor at the Business School the Temple University, and I'm here to give you an assessment of the economic impact of the casino. Okay? And I was asked by the casino people to look at how -- really assess the economic consequences. And here's my main point: Casinos are really a job killer, and their direct tax benefit is really a budget-busting loss for the city. That's my conclusion. And so before you place a casino too close to a neighborhood, let's be sure we know that there's anything beneficial from having these things in the city in the first place. Now, why can I say this? I have had 30 years' experience in economic policy analysis. I ran the forecasting system to the Department of Energy when the energy legislation was going through 249 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation dealing with the billions of dollars relating to oil gas and electric utilities. I analyzed the deepening of the channel for Steve Van Dyke, who was the first head of PICA. And I was also an adviser for the Tax Reform Commission, and you know the good job that they did on coming up with a plan for tax reform. I've spent over 160 hours doing this. I'm also the son of a union carpenter, grandson of a carpenter, and great-grandson of a carpenter. So I know the construction business. I did jobs with my father and grandfather. Okay? Why the job losses? 6 cents of every dollar lost to the casinos stays in Philadelphia; the rest goes away. The profits go to Chicago, okay? And now, why does the money go 250 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation out? It's very simple. We all know who the Brookings Institute is; they're one of the most respected economic research outfits in the country. They studied the behavior of people in recreation spending. And what they showed is that people have a fixed recreation budget. And, just like Bob said, any money spent in the casinos gets taken away from other businesses. Secondly, Atlantic City gamblers will continue to go to Atlantic City for the table games. So we will gain some outside revenue. There will be a few people coming in from the suburbs, and some people will play the slots in Philadelphia rather than take the buses to Atlantic City. So -- and the numbers I show you, I presume that 35 percent of the revenue coming into the Philadelphia casinos is new revenue, okay? So the profits go to Chicago 251 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and the Philadelphia suburbs. Now, to see what happens to these revenues, let's consider three couples. The first one in Fishtown, another one in Abington, and another one in Norristown. The Fishtown couple, you know, if they go to a casino on a Friday night, they've got not only money budgets, but they've got time budgets. You can't get a pizza at Taconelli's at the same time you're playing the slots, okay? They don't go to the Standard Tap. And from the name of this, I have to go there at some point. That sounds like a good place to go. And the North Bowl Lounge and Lanes, you know, these are the businesses that get hurt. This is what Bob was talking about, okay? Now, the people who own these establishments, they're in -- they're Philadelphians and they're doing serious business in the city here. The 252 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation owners of SugarHouse are out in the burbs. Now, let's consider the Norristown couple. Norristown's out here, it's beyond the ten-mile limit. And if we look at the Foxwoods report -- because there is no 9 SugarHouse report; there's one paragraph of numbers and some testimony they gave a while ago, and those numbers are basically silly. I can explain later, okay? Econsult says that one third of the trips by people outside of ten miles from the Ground Zero will do side trips -- they call "ancillary spending" is the big word for that -- in the city, okay?
So they expect each patron, each person to drop 60 bucks, 120 for the couple, 75 bucks on one third of their trips in places like the Mummers Museum. That's what they use in their report, okay? 253 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Add that up. 120 plus 150 add up to 270 bucks, okay? 270 bucks. The median household income in Norristown is 39,000. Can they afford that? No way. That -- you know, and this one-third rule is like -- one third of us who live in Center City go to Valley Forge when we go out to King of Prussia Mall, okay? That makes a lot of sense, okay? Let's look at the Abington couple. They're convenience gamblers. Philadelphia Park is closer. The city is bracketed by convenience casinos from the north and south, okay? And, now, here's where they would go. They would go to Philadelphia Park rather than come down here, okay? By the same token, someone out in King of Prussia, they got the choice really of the Schuylkill Expressway, which is a parking lot, or to the Pennsylvania Turnpike to 254 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Philadelphia Park, okay? So really, here's the key point: Almost all visitors to SugarHouse are city people. There's no 6 new money -- or I should say almost no 7 new money, because some of 'em will have gone to Las Vegas, but, as Bob points out, the gambling rate doubles when you're much closer, okay? Bad deal. Okay? So I did some calculations based on the numbers in the econsult report. My calculations are: The neighborhoods lose 5424 jobs. Those are jobs from places like Taconelli's, Marra's, Termini's Bakery. And if you don't believe me, think about what happened when Home Depot built its store in South Philly. What happened to those construction businesses along Washington Avenue? A lot of them left. Center City Lumber has left; I know that because I do carpentry. Twelfth Street Lumber is 255 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation gone, okay? Or what was it -- Tenth or Eleventh Street, whatever it was called, okay? So the claim is, the casinos add 1502 jobs; this is the Foxwoods numbers that are verifiable. And, by the way, this is a very good, well- documented study; it's the best economic-impact study I've seen done for any project in Philadelphia, okay? But the net city loss is 3922 jobs out of the city, of which 5400 from the neighborhoods, okay? Why the losses? You know, how can you talk about building a facility with all of these jobs being put in this one big building and the city loses jobs? The answer is very simple. This is from the econsult report. 3 jobs. Again, the -- and in their ancillary spending analysis, econsult gave me -- you know, gave the information. 7 jobs in the 256 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation recreation business outside of the casinos. So if I say every casino dollar costs 65 cents in recreational spending, and I'm giving -- I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt that there is some added revenue. This is the job loss per million jobs, five-and-a-quarter jobs per million dollars spent in the casino. Bad deal, okay? Now, why -- so we've addressed the job issues. Let's look at the neighborhood issues. First, you're going to lose taxes in the neighborhoods. Not only is it jobs; it's wage taxes, it's business privileges taxes, it's real-estate taxes. We're talking serious money here. And, you know, the people who lose jobs in the neighborhood businesses, they don't pay wage taxes. Closed businesses mean vacant 257 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation stores in neighborhoods, and we got a lot of neighborhoods on the edge here. So we got close -- we'll lose some stores. What's that do? You know what a vacant building does to a neighborhood. It's going to cause tax losses in the whole neighborhood. And then we've got increasing policing costs and increasing social costs. Bob detailed how deadly casinos are to some people's lives, okay? So proximity doubles the active addicts.
Now, heroin addicts, you know, drug addicts get supplied by, you know, this underground network. Gambling addicts need officially-sanctioned big buildings with a lot of expensive equipment, okay? Okay? They are more likely -- you know, Bob said they commit more crimes, family problems, higher suicide rates. And the city pays the increased costs of social services. 258 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation So these are not free dollars. You're going to have extra expenses in the city because of this. Take -- you know, taking the budget nut that the casino says you'll get and subtracting off the expenses, this is the hole you get from casinos, almost $30 million in the city budget. Now, there are assumptions here. You know, I don't have a several-hundred-thousand-dollar budget or a research staff, so I took the total social costs and divided it between the city and state, okay? And we all know that an economic impact statement never includes the alternative -- the value of the alternative uses of those sites; it's all the big number. This is valuable land, and the only reason it's not developed is because they own it and won't let it be used for anything else, okay? ) 259 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation PROFESSOR MURPHY: Here's the hole. City Council has been, you know, has to go before PICA and have a balanced five-year plan. The five-year plan, you know, assumes that you get that revenue free and clear. Now, will you get any money from the state? Using the same econsult report, the state, from a 3,000-slot casino -- this is not the total state losses; this is one 3,000-slot casino. It loses 12,814 jobs, using the econsult report number. It loses 37 million in tax revenues and has higher social costs because some of the people come from the suburbs, okay? So the state will either have to keep more of the casino taxes to cover its losses -- and, by the way, I didn't mention the money from the lottery's going to go down as well. What do you think they're going to do? They're going to cut your take. That's 260 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation what they're going to do. Think of Richard Nixon and revenue-sharing. What happened to those revenue-sharing dollars? The feds took 'em back, right? This is what's going to happen to you here. So it's sucker money. Expect the -- and the other thing is that if you'll look at Phase 3, you know, that's another -- I forget, 60 million of extra construction that increases their profits by only one million. Do you think they're going to really do that? They're going to come back to you for cuts in the taxes to make this economic so they can, quote/unquote, generate more jobs. You're not -- you're not hearing the end of this. They're going to come back at you. You're in trouble on that one, okay? So what have I shown? More money out than in, jobs losses, broken city budget, okay? 261 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation So the key to the casino saying they're generating all of this economic activity -- two things. It's all new business; it's not all new business. Secondly, on one third of the trips from anyone living ten miles outside of Ground Zero, they're going to go to the museums and local restaurants, and you just heard Bob say how many businesses closed in Atlantic City because of those casinos. This is a fraud. And so you're dealing with a bad deal here, okay? Now, I can work -- I'm -- I'm available to work with any of your staffers to work through these numbers. I've been in the forecasting business 30 years, and I know that there are no 20 facts about the future. I've made a bunch of assumptions, but my assumptions about the new money and the, quote/unquote, ancillary spending passed the lab test; theirs don't, okay? 262 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And so I can work with your staffers to really see what the economic impact of the casino is. Thank you. )
Than k you all so very much. I think your testimony has been very, very helpful. Thank you.
I thank you too for your testimony and your analysis, which indeed offers us an additional perspective. The $39 million hole you spoke about, is that over the life? PROFESSOR MURPHY: That's annual. That's your annual hole.
263 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Okay. (Laughter.)
Now -- (Applause.) PROFESSOR MURPHY: Now, if I were one of the casinos, if I were one of the casinos, I'd do the big lie and multiple by it by 5, okay? to make the number look really big. I gave you an annual number.
Secondly, have you ever had an opportunity to do this type of analysis as it relates to Convention Center? Some of the arguments you've presented, I must say, wasn't in government, but I clearly remember the angst that government was going through with the building of the first Convention Center, where there were job losses and there were business losses. And then you fast-forward X-number of years, and the city is at a different place with 264 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation regards to hospitality and tourism. Do you have a perspective on that? Have you ever had a chance to look at how the establishment of a convention center, or centers, then changed the -- all of the factors you presented in this analysis? PROFESSOR MURPHY: I have not looked at the Convention Center economic impacts statement. There's one major difference.
Please. PROFESSOR MURPHY: And that is that convention centers are designed to bring in new money from the outside.
Okay. PROFESSOR MURPHY: That's one very big difference. Now, whether it pays for itself is another question, and I can't testify to that.
265 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Our next witness? MR. McPHERSON: The next panel is Dolores Griffith, Wil Rojas, MaryAnne Warrington, Eric Rudy. (Witnesses come forward.)
Sure. Good afternoon, Council President Verna and members of Council. My name is Delores Griffith. I reside in the 1000 block of Palmer Street, which is on the river side of Fishtown. Not only do I live in Fishtown; I am employed there. I am 266 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation a 2nd-grade teacher at St. Laurentius School. I have been a community volunteer for the last years. My 6 work is involved in: Celebrate 7 Fishtown, Fishtown Neighbors 8 Association, past president of 9 St. Laurentius Ladies Guild, 10 St. Laurentius CYO board member, and 11 cheerleading coach. And just recently, 12 I added Fishtown Action to that list. 13 Last May, I was intensely 14 excited to be working on the Subcasino 15 Committee with the Fishtown Neighbors 16 Association. We were working on a 17 community benefits agreement with 18 SugarHouse. 19 As months passed, the tide of 20 the leadership of FNA turned, and it 21 joined the North Delaware Avenue Unity 22 Coalition; I was left out in the cold, 23 I had no voice. That's why I am a 24 founding member of Fishtown Action, 25 which now is the largest community 267 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation organization in Fishtown, with over 300 members. FACT is now corresponding with SugarHouse executives to make our community better and more attractive. We need employment for our neighborhood and an entertainment district for our waterfront. We do not want to look at an empty, vacant, rodent-infested lot for the next 11 years. Please take this testimony, my 12 voice, into consideration. 13 Thank you. 14 (Applause.) 15
Good 18 afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam 19 President and members of Council. 20 Thank you for this opportunity to speak 21 on this very important topic regarding 22 zoning of the SugarHouse Casino. 23 My name is MaryAnne 24 Warrington. I've been a lively resident 25 of Fishtown community, and I've resided 268 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation in my present home for 27 years. I live within a few blocks of the proposed SugarHouse site. This is commonly referred to as "the Riverside location closest to the casino." My husband and I have raised our family of three children and have volunteered with numerous community organizations. For example, my husband involved as coach of the Fishtown Athletic Association while our daughters played sports on various Fishtown team clubs. I have seen changes in the neighborhood over my 48 years -- some positive, but many negative. I fully support the SugarHouse Casino project and I urge City Council to give SugarHouse the opportunity to proceed with construction. I have heard numerous complaints regarding opposition against this project. I recognize the concern that a large development like SugarHouse will result in an increased 269 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation traffic in my community. I am also well aware of the work PennDOT will be doing to design new I-95 offramps. The time frame for these ramps has been moved up in an effort to address the need for more direct access to the Fishtown waterfront. I have been to numerous meetings in the neighborhood with PennDOT as well as written several e-mails regarding the new expansion and how this will affect the area. Sound barriers and retaining walls are an important feature that will definitely improve the noise and pollution from the increased traffic. The Fishtown neighborhood has long been ignored by the city. Now with this possible construction of this development, the attention to the highway and street signals is in full gear. I have, over the past few weeks, seen more engineers surveying the area for the development of the highway than 270 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I have seen in my entire 27 years that I have lived at my present location. I do not believe that the planned improvements would have been designed without the potential of a one-half-billion-dollar development in our community. At one time, there were several companies along the waterfront that employed people from the neighborhood; however, over the past two decades, they have left the waterfront, and the waterfront has deteriorated. So much potential has just sat and stagnated. Presently, the SugarHouse site is inaccessible and infested with rats. We do not need another gated-condominium community on our waterfront, we do not need another big-box store on our waterfront, we also do not need another strip mall on our waterfront. What we do need is a dynamic 271 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation facility like the SugarHouse Casino that will provide residents of our community and the city with an opportunity to improve their lives and, at the same time, advance the city's growing hospitality industry. Speaking as a lifelong Philadelphia resident and a taxpayer in the City of Philadelphia, I applaud the SugarHouse for their vision to invest in our great neighborhood and look forward to the opportunity for change and progress. Thank you for hearing on this -- thank you for having this hearing on this very important topic and for the effect it really have on the future of our community and the City of Philadelphia. Thank you. (Applause.)
Good day, Councilmembers. My name is Wilfredo 272 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation ("Wil") Rojas, and I live a few short blocks from the proposed SugarHouse Casino site in Fishtown. First I want to thank Council President Verna for convening this meeting with divergent points of views on the bills related to the zoning of the area as a Commercial Entertainment District and other related matters will be respectfully expressed. I believe that all of us must understand how SugarHouse Casino will impact the economic and social fabric of Fishtown and contribute to the future development of my Fishtown community and the city I love. And I would just like to say that while I was in college, I had many professors who presented a lot of statistics, and the one interesting thing is, no matter how opposed they were, they could not prove that their statistics were the correct ones, so I learned to be more reliant on human 273 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation nature and what human feelings are than I was on statistics. I appear before you as a lifelong neighborhood activist who is now a member of both the Fishtown Neighborhood Association and the newly-created Fishtown Action Group. I come before you not as a spokesperson but as a concerned taxpayer looking to improve the quality of life in Fishtown through economic development, job creation, and a partnership with a large corporation who has vowed to generate jobs, address the problems of increased traffic, add more police to the area, and produce badly-needed revenue for Philadelphia, among other things. Moreover, Fishtown has publicly committed to enter into a community benefits agreement with the residents of Fishtown. I grew up not far from Fishtown. I attended Penn Treaty Junior High School in the late '60s. 274 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And as a founder of the Norris Square Civic Association, I worked with the olid Fishtown Civic Association, Captain David Morrell, and the political leaders and regular residents of this wonderful community on issues of concern to both communities. One thing I learned in my dealings with the old-time residents of Fishtown is their big passion for this small slice of Philadelphia. The people I have come to know from Fishtown are very protective of their neighborhood. They keep their streets clean, value education, fight crime and prostitution, promote treatment for drug abusers, patronize the businesses in the area, are hardworking and could use more jobs in the neighborhood, fought against the rowdy nightclubs on Delaware Avenue, speak their minds, and are not afraid to stand up to the large cooperations. 275 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation So seven years ago, I became a full-fledged resident of Fishtown, purchasing a home in the one division Councilman DiCicco represents in the 18th Ward. Over the past year, I have heard loud protests over the proposed SugarHouse Casino but have also heard wide docile whispers of support for the SugarHouse Casino. Like other Philadelphia communities, Fishtown has been changing and so has its population. Once a robust blue-collar working-class community, the people I know in Fishtown are now clamoring for good-paying jobs for themselves and other Philadelphians. The army of building trade workers who live there are anxious for large construction sites to come to Philadelphia. The residents want lower property taxes and a reduction in the city wage tax. While Fishtown may be changing, the character and the 276 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation tenacity of the residents who built and maintained this riverside community hasn't changed. The culture and value of a community known to fight against anyone who attempts to harm their neighborhood is renowned.
Knowing what I know about the old character of Fishtown and recognizing that you as a City Council have will have to carefully considering your decision on these bills, you should be careful not to kill a project which has united the people in Fishtown who are looking to improve the human and physical conditions in the neighborhood. SugarHouse Casino is offering opportunities for the future of Fishtown, and the residents who support these opportunities are accepting and inviting positive development and not looking for confrontation. In the final analysis, I've heard members of City Council concede 277 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that casino construction in Philadelphia is inevitable. I would hope that members of this committee understand that the economic benefits to our city of the Fishtown proposal far exceed the political capital of voting to kill the SugarHouse project of Fishtown. For economic and waterfront improvement reasons, it makes sense to seriously consider the SugarHouse site proposal, and, in the same breath, represent constituents in assuring that SugarHouse lives up to the promises of the benefit to the community. Thank you. )
My name is Eric 278 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Rudy. I am a resident of Fishtown and live on the river side of Girard Avenue, just a few blocks from the SugarHouse site. I am also a founding member -- or one of the founding members of Fishtown Action. Over the last ten years, I have volunteered for the Fishtown Athletic Club as a coach in soccer and softball, secretary, in-house director, travel soccer director, and I'm currently the treasurer of the club. Over the last three years, I've also become one of the largest contributors, private contributors, to the club. When I commit to a cause, I jump in with both feet and put my money where my mouth is. After years of job loss, it seemed as though our neighborhood was about to pass into history along with nearly every other working-class neighborhood in the city. Then came the announcement that two casinos were 279 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation interested in developing land in Fishtown. This is now an exciting time to be in Fishtown. We celebrated for a time, and then we realized that this would not come without some pain. Issues such as increased traffic made us do a gut check to see if this was something that we really wanted. Most of us remained on the fence, unsure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. I met Ken Snyder from the SugarHouse group in the spring of 2006. Our basketball and indoor-soccer programs were still going on, and my focus was in helping our sports director, Dave Dougherty, ensure that both seasons would continue to run smoothly while laying the ground work for the upcoming baseball and softball seasons. We talked about with Ken about the role Fishtown Athletic Club plays 280 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation in keeping children involved in the community activities. We explained that involvement in our sports programs fills a lot of idle time, allows them to meet new people, and gives them something to look forward to on nights and weekends. As you all know, this reduces the probability that kids will be hanging out and getting in trouble. A couple of weeks later, we received a donation of $25000 from SugarHouse to support our basketball program. A few weeks after that, I became involved with a group that would ultimately be identified as the North Delaware Avenue Unity Coalition. This was a collection of representatives from neighborhood groups that came together to jointly support this area in the event that either SugarHouse or Pinnacle or RiverWalk were issued one of the two gaming licenses for Philadelphia. I met a lot of good people who 281 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation were interested in establishing dialogue with the casino applicants. As I saw it, the purpose of this coalition was to minimize the negative and maximize the positive aspects of gambling in our neighborhood. SugarHouse was the only one that I saw that was willing to work closely with us. Work, club, and personal demands forced me to the sidelines, and I could no longer the NDAUC my full attention, so I gracefully bowed out. Then something happened that really surprised me and shocked me. The NDAUC, which used to be a balance of people that were for and against the casino, which is something really we needed in order to be the best negotiating -- put ourselves in the best negotiating position. That mix and that balance eventually changed. Shortly after the announcement that SugarHouse and Foxwoods were 282 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation selected, the NDAUC allied themselves with a -- what was then a loosely knit group of South Philly groups that were vehemently opposed to the Foxwoods Casino. This new alliance ultimately refused to negotiate with the casinos. Somewhere along the line, there was an effort to encourage the practice of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what might stick. Anti-casino jumped on it and rode it as far as they could.
Legal challenges ensued in the process of trapping the issue, and bureaucracy began. The time for throwing spaghetti at the wall has to be ended. SugarHouse is now a member of our community, and should be recognized as such. )
I'm sorry -- sorry 283 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation for talking while you're interrupting me. (Laughter.) (Applause.)
Please let in us Fishtown begin the process of establishing a constructive dialogue with what could be the largest source of employment and our only slice of tourism pie. If everyone does their job, including city, state, SugarHouse and, us, this will work. I could testify to the types of job casinos employ. I'm probably the only person in this room that can claim to have at least five relatives who have been employed in the gaming industry. My nephew graduated from high school and, lacking other options, decided to start his career with a well-known casino in Connecticut. My mother-in-law also worked for that -- for Foxwoods for a few years and rode 284 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that job into retirement. My sister-in-law worked her way up, learning how to deal cards; learning from that, from just dealing cards, to training dealers and was headhunted by a casino in Sacramento, California, where she currently is employed. My uncle and cousins were both employed by a casino in upstate New York area. This allowed them stable employment and provided them with health benefits necessary to raise their families. In my travels, I see a lot more Fishtowners who support SugarHouse than oppose it. It appears to me that there are only a few people trying to work a straight anti-casino sentiment in Fishtown. I understand that one of them even moved to Fishtown after SugarHouse applied for a gaming license. Fishtown Action was created a 285 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation few months ago simply to provide residents with information regarding employment and vendor opportunities, which give the residents a chance to meet SugarHouse personnel so that information and concerns could be exchanged directly. Our proactive efforts have been well received and have served to give our residents unprecedented access to SugarHouse. We in Fishtown need these jobs and the opportunities to provide support services, and we need them now. Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. Any questions of this witness by members of the committee? (No questions.)
There being none, thank you. Thank you so much for your testimony. MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel is Joanne Sherman, Charlie Hocker, and 286 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Chuck Valentine. (Applause.) (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Can you hear me?
Good afternoon, members of Council. My name is Charles Valentine. I was raised in Fishtown and am now raising my own two young children in Fishtown, as so many generations of Fishtowners do. I'm a diehard Fishtowner. I'm a member of Fishtown's Holy Name of Jesus Church and AOH Division 51. I presently serve as vice president of Fishtown's St. Laurentius Home and School Association and am president- elect. I am now serving my sixth year as a scout leader in Fishtown. Over 20 years ago, I served as the founding member of the New 287 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Kensington CDC for which I worked for ten years. I'm presently a member of the Fishtown Neighbors Association and Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront. I come before you seeking your unanimous support of Councilman DiCicco's bill allowing for a 1500-foot buffer between casinos and neighborhoods. I'm also seeking your unanimous in rejecting Councilman Ramos's bill, which, in essence, will allow SugarHouse Casino to be built within 300 feet of residential properties and destroy the neighborhoods of Fishtown, Port Richmond, Northern Liberties, Old City, and Society Hill. Eighty percent of you, just a short time ago in your previous term, supported us in passing zoning legislation for this same site, which protected the neighborhood from intrusive, neighborhood-destroying 288 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation nightclubs. You just recently supported us in your unanimous support of a referendum to allow for the 1500-foot buffer. You have hit a raw nerve with a very few elected officials in the gaming industry in not only showing your support for the referendum but also your insistence in allowing us to be involved in the process. The pressure exerted on you is amazing. You have stayed focused on supporting the wishes of the majority of the city and your constituents in keeping casinos out of neighborhoods, not out of the city. The founding fathers would be proud of that you you're not selling out the city to casinos despite the pressure of the powerful few. Your constituents have appreciated you more than ever before in your career, because this is a do-or-die vote for a great number of neighborhoods. 289 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation You are obviously doing something right since you are not just giving in the backroom casino deal that was recently reported on in the June issue of Philadelphia Magazine. S. Attorney's Office should investigate. We assume that you nor us have changed, have you? I and thousands of other Fishtowners are opposed to the SugarHouse Casino site, and we disagree with Councilman Clarke in a recent June 5th Daily News portrayal of the Fishtown support for that location. The meeting was a pro-casino pep rally; and that's okay, but call it what it is. SugarHouse employees made calls to residents who had failed out calls of support solicited by SugarHouse; that's the group you heard 290 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation about, the FACT meeting, the FACT group. A message on my home answering machine from SugarHouse mistakenly thanked me for my support and then invited me to the meeting. The message said this was a chance for pro-casino voices to be heard since anti-casino groups have captured the attention of City Council and other politicians. That's the quote; I still have it on my voicemail, if you want to hear it. It also said that if you were interested in the jobs the casinos would bring, you should come and bring families and friends. The emphasis was on jobs; nothing else was messaged in the message. There was no public announcement of the meeting in the community newspapers The Spirit or The Star, nor were flyers given out. Invitation to the meeting was primarily by invitation only from the SugarHouse 291 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation calls and by word of mouth from supporters of FACT, the pro-casino group.
As a result of the SugarHouse call I received, I went to the meeting to hear what would be said. From the beginning, it was a pep rally for SugarHouse supporters. The casino executives shared very little of the development plan that will cost upwards of 500 million. In fact, the A&E firm that was doing the presentation was asked to cut their presentation short by one of the FACT leaders. Joanne Weber of SugarHouse spoke only about the jobs the casino will provide. This indicated to me that an in-depth presentation of the project wasn't intended. When the floor was open for questions, they took two, and a third person and myself were next. From what I saw, some of the FACT members saw me coming, indicated to the FACT leader at 292 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the mic to say that the questions were over. Have you ever been to a meeting where developers presenting a $500 million proposal and there are only four questions, especially with almost 200 people present? I know your answer; the answer is no. Thus, the point. It was a pro-casino rally, not about hearing what the development was about. If the casinos are located somewhere else in the city, my neighbors and friends from Fishtown can still get a job there, but they can't stop the negative impact SugarHouse will have on the neighborhood if it is put at its present location. I'm not a supporter of the casino at this location because of all of the negative effects that will come along with the great cost to our families, the neighborhood, and the city. The truth is, thousands of 293 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Fishtowners want the buffer. The negative impact studies are numerous and readily available, and a number of us have asked Council if you wanted them over the last few month so that we could inform you. And you've heard it today, maybe some of you for the first time, but a lot of us know about what you've learned. If Philadelphians or Fishtowners or any elected officials support casinos near residential neighborhoods, they simply haven't been properly informed. If they had the facts, they would not support casinos at their present location. That is why the Temple University Hospital Nurses Association and Temple Allied Professionals, representing 1600 professional health-care workers at Temple, voted to support the 1500-foot buffer and opposed the current locations, due to increase in gambling 294 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation addictions, personal bankruptcy, intrafamilial violence -- one spouse beating up another or a parent beating up a child or a child, if he's old enough, beating up his parents due to the stress gambling imposes -- and public crime. That's why a citywide survey that 79 percent of Philadelphians are opposed to the present location and want a 1500-foot buffer. That's why a door-to-door survey of 355 homes in Fishtown closest to the SugarHouse site showed that 77 percent are opposed to the location of SugarHouse. That is why the Philly ballot box citizens referendum was 95 in support of the 1500-foot buffer. And that is why 82 percent of Fishtowners who voted on Election Day at the Philly ballot box in the heart of Fishtown, 18th Ward, Division 11, were in favor of the 1500-foot buffer. , and Canada show that urban areas are more than 80 percent opposed to casinos in their area. In essence, that is why the State Supreme Court and those in the gaming industry took away the people's right to vote, because a vote would have been a final definitive statement that would support City Council's position to keep the casinos 1500 feet away from residential neighborhoods, parks, schools, and places of worship. When has Council ever had this kind of support for any legislation that they have ever passed at these high percentages? Never, never. That is why it would be easy for you to vote for your constituents and reject the Ramos bill and support the DiCicco bill.
If you do not, it will also be 296 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the first time that any of you individually would have voted against a significantly large majority of your constituents. I'm also leaving for you, along with my testimony, a copy of a featured Wall Street Journal published on June 11th. The title of the story was "Bad Odds," written by Mark Whitehouse, a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. The subtitle for this extensive article stated, quote: As more states look to win the economic jackpot with casinos, evidence suggests they are playing a losing hand. The article clearly addresses the mistakes that cities make in thinking that casinos will solve the issues of taxes and jobs, when, in fact, the casinos do not, as many economists have concluded. There are only two questions before you today: Will you support the survival of our neighborhoods and vote 297 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation for Councilman DiCicco's bill and against Councilman Ramos's bill? Or will you become a part of the backroom deal and support the powerful and aggressive gaming industry and only a few elected officials and kill our neighborhoods by voting for Councilman Ramos's bill and against Councilman DiCicco's bill? Thank you for listening to my testimony. )
Go ahead and proceed with your testimony and identify yourself for the record.
My name is Joanne Sherman. I live at 143 East Allen Street, the closest street to the proposed casino site, with my husband, my daughter, and my grandson. I am here today to ask you to please vote against the Ramos bill and support the 1500-foot buffer between casinos and neighborhoods. 298 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I have lived on Allen Street for 50 years like my father -- I have lived on Allen Street for 50 years. Growing up in my neighborhood was great. " At night, when the workers came home, we sat out on the stoop after dinner and chatted with our neighbors about anything and everything. Life was normal and peaceful. Then, along come the nightclubs on Delaware Avenue, which became known as "Hellaware Avenue"; that's exactly what it was for five years. Although the clubs were only open four nights a week, during those four nights, we were forced to endure all kinds of horrors -- loud music, public sex, drunkenness, shootings 299 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation sometimes resulting in deaths, rapes, beatings, robberies in our homes and vehicles. There were literally pissing contests, using our street as a toilet. Even women would squat down right in front of us and leave their waste on the street. We saw patrons of the club stealing and using drugs; sitting in their cars, drinking and having sex before and after going to the clubs; and leaving their evidence behind -- drug packet, needles, condoms, liquor bottles. This was all done in front of our children. We were no longer able to stay out at night. Parking was impossible; the parking spots, sidewalks, and even the middle of the street were taken up by the patrons of the club to the point that cars couldn't drive on the street. Eventually, through hard work, we were able to rid the neighborhood of 300 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the clubs; and once again, life became peaceful and quiet. We are now able to sit on a stoop and socialize, sharing coffee, food and stories of the past. Because of the terrible impact these clubs had had on surrounding areas, Fishtown Neighbors Association pushed for and received a zoning change on the riverfront. Councilman DiCicco enacted a bill in 2002 prohibiting venues for the sole purpose of entertainment, dance halls, restaurants, and nightclubs on the north end of Delaware Avenue. What happened to that zoning bill? It has all been but forgotten. Now that casinos are being shoved down by our throats by someone who sold us down the river without regard to the residents of this neighborhood and what we want. In America, our most precious rights are the right to speak freely, express ourselves, and the right to 301 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation vote. I am appalled that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court took away our right to vote on the most important issue to come to our community and city in decades. The people have spoken many times. We have collected 27,000 signatures to demand the right to vote on the 1500-foot buffer. After that was struck down, we collected more than 13,000 votes in an alternate election on May 15th. We deserve to have our say. I am not against casinos, but SugarHouse Casino needs to be relocated. It does not belong in any neighborhood where it can influence our children and change our lives for the worst. SugarHouse promises that it will be safe, an asset to our community, providing jobs and revenue to the city; at the same time, it promises to put more police on Allen 302 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Street. If the casino is as safe as they claim, why do they acknowledge that it will need more police? The casino can still happen in another location away from people's homes so our children and neighbors can enjoy the peaceful, normal life that we fought to protect. I ask each one of you whether you would honestly want a casino across from your house or in your neighborhood. I doubt that any of you would welcome it in your backyard.
I beg you again to please vote against Ramos's bill and support the 1500-foot buffer zone between casinos and neighborhoods. Thank you. )
My name is Charles Hocker. I live at 114 East Allen Street. I'm living there almost 54 years, and -- just a second. In that time, it was a 303 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation wonderful -- it's a wonderful neighborhood today and it was wonderful then, until the city decided to put clubs on Delaware Avenue, from Delaware Avenue to 95-North to Spring Garden Street. And as the lady just explained to you, it was horrible, absolutely horrible. So we decided to do something. And with the help -- excuse me. With the help of the State Representative in our district, we were successful in closing all of 'em. So what I'm leading up to is, it appears to me that we're running into the same situation; however, triple the problems. When we had the clubs on Delaware Avenue, like the lady said, the traffic was absolutely terrible. And everything that she said is exactly true. There were shootings in my driveway, two shootings. A police officer was beaten. And the sex and 304 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation all that stuff right on my own doorstep. So as I said, we cleaned up all of the clubs, and it was peace and happiness. A few years later, we got a hint that there was going to be casinos in Philadelphia. Immediately, we were up in arms based on what we saw with the clubs. So we went to Harrisburg to protest it. The vote was taken while we were asleep; we had no choice to vote on it. So what we did, we went back the following week, and we were met at the door and they said, "No questions are allowed to be asked today." So we took it from there, and we decided, Well, let's see if we can get on the ballot at the last election for mayor. Again, we were shut down. And like the gentleman over here said, we got our own ballot boxes distributed around as far as we could. 305 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And the result was, the referendum was 95 percent in support of the 1500-foot referendum. And they also took a city survey, and it showed that 79 percent of the Philadelphians are opposed to the present location and want the 1500-foot buffer. My question is: What happened to justice for all? We didn't have a chance from the very beginning, not one chance, but we're going to fight this thing to the very, very end, as far as we have to go, and we hope that you will support us in this effort and defeat the Ramos bill. Thank you very much. (Applause.)
Than k you. Thank you. MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel consists of Pastor Mary Miller, Reverend Dick Ullman and Joy Segal. (Witnesses come forward.) 306 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Good afternoon and welcome. Please identify yourself for the record.
Good afternoon. My name is Mary Katherine Miller and I am the pastor of Kensington Old Brick United Methodist Church, located at Richmond and Marlboro Streets less in Philadelphia than 1500 feet away from where the proposed casino is supposed to come in, and on the river side of 95. The church has had the pleasure and privilege of being in ministry to, with, and for the people of Fishtown for over 200 years. We trace our ancestry to John Heusen. The first Methodists in Fishtown met at his house, and as their numbers grew, they met under the tree, an old elm tree at Penn Treaty, and eventually, this started in 1801, and in 1804, became the Kensington Methodist Episcopal Church. 307 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation In the span of the 200-plus years that Old Brick has been part of Fishtown, three churches have been built on the site where it is currently located, each using the bricks from the previous churches; thus, the name "Old Brick" that the folks in the neighborhood know it by. Five churches have come from here; three still are in the Kensington portion of the city, each of which offers an after-school program for the children in their neighborhood. The church has seen the neighborhood grow and prosper, and we have seen the neighborhood decline with the loss of jobs along the riverfront. We have seen the neighborhood split by the building of Interstate 95. Many of the church's members lost their home to that construction. There have been different points in time in the church's history that the church buildings have suffered 308 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation break-ins and vandalism, which have included broken windows, theft of property, and graffiti. There is graffiti on the building currently, which we're preparing to have painted over and removed. Although the neighborhood shows signs of some of the same problems found throughout Philadelphia, we can find packets that used to contain drugs just across the street when you walk down the street. It is still, though, by and far, a very quiet neighborhood. Not too long ago, when there were nightclubs, as you have heard, along the Delaware, crime, traffic, congestion, and violent acts were commonplace. And several years ago, the Council heard the cries of the people for help and established a way to protect the neighborhood. I come here asking that you do you not invite the same problems back 309 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation on an escalated scale into the neighborhood once again. Please do not invite the troubles back to the neighborhood that has borne the brunt of riverfront development over time over and over again, and yet remained faithful to their roots and have strong roots in that area. The people of Old Brick care immensely for their neighbors, many of whom will be as close or closer to the casino as the distance of standing in center field at Citizens Bank Park and looking toward home plate. We've looked out for the neighborhood by helping folks meet their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, with an eye on the total well-being of the individual and the overall well-being of the neighborhood. As a church, we are in the business of helping folks find hope when there seems little to hope for. I 310 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation am sure each of you, at some point in your life, has met someone who sees little hope for themselves, their families, or their children. Folks who are in such a place often make choices that will harm them and sometimes will harm others because they really feel they have nothing to lose and maybe just a little bit to gain from their actions. They seek solutions in things that will temporarily dull their pain like alcohol and drugs. Others will try and find something, anything that will bring them some sense that all is not hopeless, that their lives could be better, they can have security, meaning, and purpose.
Casinos, and especially slot machines, take advantage of people at their most vulnerable, as you know. They are designed to exploit us at the most vulnerable places of our human psyche, conditioning us to believe that 311 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation just one more spin, one more coin will give us the return we seek, will generate the money we need to meet those hopes we have and can see no 6 other way of meeting. Hopes for enough money to move out of an unsafe neighborhood. Hopes to have money to pay the rent, to pay the gas company, or our electric bill before we lose our homes, heat or power. Hope to pay the last hospital bill because we work jobs without benefits and we got sick. Hope to have enough for a bus pass to get to work hope for money to put shoes on the children, food in their bellies. Casinos sell sort of hope too; that hope, however, is false hope. A room full of slot machines is filled with flashing lights and loud bells all designed to draw people in and to send the message of supposed success all 312 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation around. Come on, they say, can't you see, can't you hear the next loud bill 5 and flashing light could be for you. Yeah, I know you've reached your budget, but just think about it, one more try. Just one more try over and over again. You can't put one more coin in a slot machine anymore; you have to put in fives and tens and twenties. For the slot machines and video poker, which cost a quarter or more, you can't use dollar bills. To aid in the process of taking as much as it can and giving as little back as legally allowed, casinos offer alcohol, which deadens the senses and inhibits judgment. What will those who come to the casinos seeking a better life with every five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bill really get? The vast majority get empty pockets, empty dreams, hopes 313 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation unfulfilled. The neighborhood, what does it get? Traffic and the various kind of crime that come with casinos -- more drugs, more violence, and the loss of their hope for a safe place to live free of drugs, crime, and violence; loss of people's hope for a place to raise their families and a place to set their children up for success in life. The neighborhood gets to bear the cost of increased insurance rates as properties get damaged. They get to bear those costs alone. And wrongly and sadly enough, unlike those folks who are coming to the casinos willingly to put money in the machine, transferring control of their hope to someone else's hands, the neighborhood doesn't even have to drop a single bill to be the beneficiaries of what comes with casinos. By voting down the two resolutions presented by Councilman 314 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Ramos, you have the opportunity to say to all here and in Harrisburg that Philadelphia will not be a part of bringing such a destructive force into Philadelphia's neighborhoods. You have the opportunity to say that as Philadelphia's leaders, the ones in whom the citizens of the city have entrusted hopes for health, safety, and welfare, the ones who are best versed on the needs of these city. You will, instead, search for ways to offer the people of Fishtown and people of Philadelphia things that meet their true needs, that offer them hope for a bright future for themselves and their children. You have the opportunity to say that you will search for industries that will provide good-paying jobs, with benefits over the long-term. You will search for business that is don't attract crime, that don't attract violence, businesses that aren't 315 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation designed to take more out of the city than they are ever going to bring back. You have the opportunity to bring hope to the people of Fishtown and Philadelphia. I encourage you to embrace and seize that opportunity. Thank you. )
Than k you. Please identify yourself for the record.
Madam Chairperson, Honorable Councilmembers, my name is Dick Ullman. I live in Society Hill, and I am an Episcopal priest. I'm retired from full-time ministry but continue active in ministry in our city. I'm here this afternoon to urge your favorable action on the bill 23 to establish a buffer zone between any casino and homes, schools, and houses of worship; and I want particularly to 316 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation focus on houses of worship. They're special places where people come to connect with their god, where people come to meditate, where people come for study, for succor, for celebration. These are sacred activities, and they require a zone of peace, quiet, and tranquility. Houses of worship have always been places of refuge, sanctuaries set apart. You know this by your own experience. When you step into a church, a synagogue, a mosque, you walk on holy ground. From ancient times, every society has honored sacred precincts. Moses, in the presence of the holy one at the burning bush, takes off his shoes, aware that he stands on holy ground. Still today, at Hindu and Buddhist temples and at Muslim mosques throughout the world, visitors remove their shoes. The idea of buffer zones is 317 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation nothing new; although, I dare say, it is universal. One of the great things about America is our respect for the free exercise of religion. That respect is enshrined in our Constitution. Our Bill of Rights tasks every arm of government to take scrupulous care not to interfere with religious practice and conscience. And so throughout our history, at every level of government, we have enacted laws to provide buffer zones, to give houses of worship protection from certain otherwise permissible activities. Liquor laws, for example, recognize that it is important to respect a house of worship in the distribution of liquor licenses. Why? It is not because a bar or a tavern is a bad thing in itself; it is because a bar or tavern attracts activities that can come into conflict with the 318 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation activities appropriate to a house of worship. It is because these two uses, the bar and the church, are incompatible when they are too close to one another. Liquor laws are not the only example of protected buffer zones. The Philadelphia Code provides buffer zones to protect houses of worship from adult book stores, from drug paraphernalia stores, from check-cashing agencies, from tattoo parlors. Why? Again, because the nature of those uses is incompatible with the activities occurring at a house of worship. Now, as the ancient rabbis who say, how much more is this true when it comes to casinos? First, the casinos proposed for our city will have several liquor license and will be operating hours 23 a day, 7 days a week -- no sabbath, no 24 holy days allowed. Imagine attempting a silent retreat or Yom Kippur services 319 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation or an Easter vigil next door to such a neighbor. Second, the casinos proposed for our city will engender much traffic in their neighborhoods, traffic that will hinder access to any nearby house of worship; and, thus, discourages attendance; and, thereby, through governmental permission, discourage and interfere with the free exercise of religion. Third, experience the world over tells us -- and Pennsylvania's Act 71 provides for this fact -- that a certain portion of casino patrons, as we have heard several times in testimony already today, will be either pathologically-addicted gamblers or problem gamblers. Now, imagine that such a person or that person's loved once seek the comfort of a house of worship. Don't you agree that it is appropriate that no casino be within range of eye 320 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation or ear of such circumstance?
With the casinos proposed for our city, we will have something much greater in scale and impact than a tavern, an adult bookstore, a check- cashing agency, a vendor of drug paraphernalia, a tattoo parlor; we'll have thousands of slot machines, several liquor venues operating 24/7, tremendous volume of vehicular traffic. A buffer zone measured in miles would be reasonable. A buffer zone of 1500 feet would at least show some respect. At the risk of sounding like Rodney Dangerfield, I ask you for your respect this afternoon. The deep tradition of our city respects religious communities of all sorts. That is what William Penn's colony was all about. This respect for religious communities was a new idea on the face of the earth when Penn established his place of brotherly 321 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation love, Philadelphia, here, where Penn's Woods meet the river. As a priest, my impulse is to appeal to you in the name of all that is holy that you act favorably on the buffer zone ordinance. Instead, as a citizen, with scrupulous regard for the separation of church and state, I will limit my appeal. Let me simply appeal on the basis of the established norms of American law and of Philadelphia tradition: Adopt the buffer zone because you respect our tradition. Adopt the buffer zone because, like William Penn, you honor all religious communities and the conditions in which they are free to flourish. Adopt the buffer zone because you wish no house of worship to be diminished by the close proximity of inconsistent, conflicting, and 322 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation detrimental neighbors. Adopt the buffer zone because you don't want this city's pioneering historic respect for religious communities to die on your watch. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
Good afternoon. Thank you for your patience. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. My name is Joyce Segal. I am the rector of Gloria Dei Old Swedes' Church -- (Applause.)
-- which you will now find on Columbus Boulevard barely a tenth of a mile between the southern border of Gloria Dei Old 323 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Swedes and the northern border of the proposed Foxwoods Casino sites. Barely a tenth of a mile. I'm honored to follow up my esteemed colleagues in the clergy with a few short words, and I feel that they almost set me up between history and religion. But I would like to tell you a little bit about Gloria Dei Old Swedes Church and that property, because I've discovered that most of America -- indeed, a lot of Philadelphia -- is unaware of history. This is pre-William Penn history. The Swedes arrived before anybody else. New Sweden Colony was the first colony. They arrived at what is now Christiana, Delaware, in 1638, but they set up a town on Tinicum Island, right downriver from us in 1642. And that's where the first congregation, Gloria Dei, met. In 1677, the land where we are 324 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation now was awarded to Gloria Dei by a gentleman farmer, and they moved upriver and built a log house where they had church on that southern corner that is one tenth of a mile away from this proposed casino. In 1699, they built the church that exists to this day that we worship in. It was dedicated in 1700. It is the oldest church in Pennsylvania. It is the oldest brick building in Philadelphia. It is the oldest church building in continuous use in the United States of America. That's pretty amazing to me. On this property, for 330 years, through all sorts and conditions of government and history, as the city grew and waxed and waned and the neighbors and the neighborhoods changed, Gloria Dei remained. In 1942, there was a lot of worry that we were going to lose Gloria Dei, a lot of fires in the old 325 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation neighborhoods. So Dr. Roke applied to the federal government, asking for historic recognition. And in 1942, the national government recognized this brick building as a national historic site. Came in, in a wonderful church-state partnership and created the beautiful parking setting that Gloria Dei and the other building exist within today, barely a tenth of a mile... from a casino? It's hard for me to fathom. The federal government came in and helped to ensure their survival and the preservation of this, one of the oldest historic sites of any kind in the country, much less in our city. This past Easter -- Dick Ullman mentioned about Easter vigils and Yom Kippur services. Well, we thought about that this past Easter at morning at Gloria Dei. We face the river, two huge glass windows looking out at the river as the sun comes up. 326 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And we meet there before dawn, come in from the graveyard, lighting candles, telling the ancient stories as the sun begins to come up, as we just begin to get an outline of the port of a masthead floating by or a larger ship working its way out. And it was bittersweet for us this last year because we knew those big, clear glass windows, possibly as early as next year, we would see sweeping skylight, lights and noise and traffic and all of the things that will threaten this site, that will make it impossible for us, after 330 years, to hold this history high, to remind the community, the city, the nation of how we take care of each other, of our cities, of our history. I urge you finally, simply, just to consider the points so eloquently spoken by my colleague. I'll end with his words again: Please adopt the buffer zone 327 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation because you respect our tradition. Adopt the buffer zone because, like the settlers, the first settlers, like William Penn after them, like all the ones that have come since, you honor all religious communities and the conditions in which they are free to flourish.
Adopt the buffer zone because you wish no house of worship to be diminished by the close proximity of inconsistent, conflicting, and detrimental neighborhoods. And adopt the buffer zone because you don't want this city's pioneering historic respect for religious communities to die on your watch. Thank you very much for listening to me. )
Our next witnesses? 328 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel consists of Denise Earley, who left her testimony; Delilah Winder; a representative from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Julie Wong; and Bob Nelson. Are they here? (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Good afternoon. Delilah Winder, Chairperson of the African-American Chamber of Commerce.
Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Delilah Winder and I am the chairperson of the African-American Chamber of Commerce. I am here today to offer testimony about the legislation sponsored by Councilman DiCicco that 329 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation will require a 1500-foot bubble [sic] around the two approved casinos. The African-American Chamber of Commerce is the leading private-sector advocate for black-owned businesses in the Delaware Valley; and as such, we have taken a very active interest in the introduction of gaming in our city. We support the construction of these two casinos, not only because they will create jobs for workers, but because they will create opportunities for companies owned by women and minorities. We believe that should we be a priority -- that -- I'm sorry. We believe that should be a priority of every elected official. Both of these casinos have submitted detailed plans to the State Gaming Control Board, plans that we intend to hold them to, to ensure not just diversity in hiring but diversity and procurement in contracting; that's 330 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation something not enough companies do in this region. We continue to meet and speak with the casino operators to ensure that minorities and women business owners are included. I believe as a city and as individuals, we need to do more to help create, support, and develop local companies and minority-owned businesses and recognize the support entities that commit to doing so. In addition to the jobs they will create directly and indirectly, the casinos will generate tens of millions of dollars for local government annually, including 5 million for schools at a time when our schools continue to face a constant money crunch; additional revenue should not be dismissed. As we all know, education is the key to a better future. The additional tax revenues 331 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation can also be used to make our city safer by revitalizing neighborhoods and improving job-training programs, which would be instrumental in the improvement of our workforce. We understand that there is focused opposition to these sites, but we also know that there would be opposition by some to whichever casinos -- to whichever sites casinos were selected. Moreover, as a citywide organization, we are able to step back and see the good that these casinos will bring to our entire community. We believe that as elected officials, we must do the same, especially the at-large members of Council. We hope that you recognize that the overall benefit to this city of these casinos is strongly positive. It is not every day that an opportunity like this comes along. We would not delay in making it an opportunity of a lifetime for all of 332 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Philadelphia's citizens. Thank you.
Than k you. Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record.
Okay, yeah. Council President Verna and the Councilman Clarke and the member of the committee, my name is Julie Wong. I'm president of Asian Chamber of Commerce. The Asian community population in Philadelphia is growing rapidly, and it is our goal to ensure that as we grow in members, our opportunity to become business people grows as well. We believe that the future of Philadelphia region and our community will depend on our ability to increase available opportunity within our (indiscernible) market, economic growth, and the job creation that we support our families. That is one of the reason why 333 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I support the construction of these two casino. We believe that introduction of gambling into our city representing not only a opportunity for business and the individuals across the city; it especially representing our opportunity for minority-owned business. Thank you.
Good evening, Madam Chairperson and distinguished Councilmembers. Thank you for this opportunity and probably the calmer part of the day. My name is Bob Nelson, and I'm President of the Philadelphia OIC. And, as you may be aware, OIC was founded here in Philadelphia in 1964 by the late Reverend Leon H. Sullivan as an education and training institution, 334 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the first training site having been established at 19th and Oxford Streets in north central Philadelphia, an old abandoned jailhouse, which was donated by the city for a dollar a year. And from this modest beginning, OIC evolved into a national and international model of demonstrated effectiveness. In our over-43-year history, OIC has served three million people worldwide and has affiliates in South Africa; Poland, the largest OIC in the world; Great Britain; and the Caribbean. Through seven OICs across the country and in Philadelphia, that number now exceeds 67,000 people. But germane to this presentation is OIC's 16-year history of operating opportunities in the Hospitality Training Institute. And under contract with the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, OIC trains 200 people a year for jobs and careers in most of the hotels and restaurants 335 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation in the region and entertainment venues and the Convention Center itself. Between 2000 and 2006, OIC has placed 85 percent of it participants with 82 percent retention. Based upon this experience capacity, credibility, and success of the program, OIC began discussions with the then five prospective operators bidding for the Philadelphia-based licenses. Our goal was to become a resource for the industry. All bidders visited OIC, toured our existing facilities, viewed our plans to expand our space to accommodate casino training, interact with staff and students. As it pertains to Foxwoods, one of the selected licensees, their representative was the first to visit and subsequently sent an unsolicited letter indicating their willingness to work with OIC. Foxwoods also specifically referenced OIC in its 336 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation verbal and written testimony before the Gaming Commission. SugarHouse representatives met with OIC three times, and, like Foxwoods, expressed willingness to work with OIC around their human-resources needs. With both licensees as well as the other three who were not selected, there was, and is, a projection of positive partnerships. OIC's focus and goal is to prepare local Philadelphians for the in-house positions. While we focus on economic opportunities, we're well aware of the fact that you've heard today in other forums, there will be impacts on neighborhood communities, and we certainly respect the right for communities in self-determination. Yes, there will be traffic congestion. There may be an escalation of crime, although the research does not necessarily support a great 337 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation escalation of that. And there is a moral objection to gambling. Like it or not, gambling is coming. And if you look around the city, the trends are that casinos now exist in Bucks and Delaware County and Delaware and Atlantic City. They're coming to New York and they're expanding throughout Pennsylvania and will be in Philadelphia. These casinos employ people, providing good jobs to people who often do not have the skills to win and retain comparable positions elsewhere perhaps. OIC is dedicated to ensuring that those jobs, like the growing hospitality sector we already serve, are available and accessible to qualified Philadelphians and to ensuring that there are Philadelphians who are qualified and ready to take those jobs. We are not supporting gambling, but we want to remind the 338 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Council of the benefits and would like to discuss the issue the glass-half-full-perspective.
Some of this is an exercise in redundancy, as you've heard them all day long. There will be thousands of construction jobs, but we hope that Mayor Street, the next mayor, and City Council will ensure that the unions will be more racially inclusive. There will be a city wage-tax reduction over time. Revenue will support expansion of the Convention Center, leading to new hotel and restaurant construction to accommodate the larger convention and trade shows, thus leading to more jobs. There will be 1,000, 2,000 in-house casino jobs between the two casinos. The city needs these jobs. And other economic opportunities now. Council and all of Philadelphians should do all that we 339 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation can to make these jobs and other benefits happen as rapidly as possible, while still ensuring that gaming happens in a manner that works for all, including neighbors, the casinos, and the Commonwealth. Clearly, promises have been made in their proposals, in community meetings, in testimony before the Commission and verbal commitments to OIC itself. Now the goal is to hold them accountable to those commitments, which, if actualized, can and will benefit our community. Thank you.
I'm sorry. Just a moment, please. The Chair recognizes Councilwoman Brown.
Thank you, Madam Chair. 340 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Could the Asian Business Association and the African-American Chamber of Commerce speak briefly to the nature and the status of your discussions around ensuring that women and people of color have equal access to opportunity.
The African- American Chamber of Commerce has -- I have personally met with SugarHouse as well as Foxwoods on numerous occasions as well as have been invited to vendor forums in order to start to get our businesses in position to do business with them at all levels. We have discussed with them the needs of our businesses, the demographics of the type of businesses that we have in our organization, and in what way they could be instrumental in ensuring us that, across the board, we will be able to get business for our businesses.
341 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Is there anything in writing in terms of any draft of an agreement of any type?
We do not have anything in writing to date except for the meetings that we have attended, but I have actually started to put persons and businesses in contact with the procurement person at SugarHouse after the meeting that I had with them, so I know that action has started on that part.
We did the same thing. We have a meeting with them and they promised they going to, you know, give us the same opportunity. And I think Asian community really grow -- you know, growing; we need job opportunity. And I think, you know, they -- we, you know, want them to keep their promise and, you know, and give us equal opportunity in the 342 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation woman's and the minority business.
One of the predictors of future behavior is past behavior, so given the history of SugarHouse and Foxwoods and their past performance in this area, do you have a level of confidence that given their past performance --
I think at this time, they really outreach to us and we didn't -- you know, talking to them. And this really, you know, give us more confidence and that they going to change. And I think another thing was they have a mind to change the -- you know, wanted to give us more opportunity. I think they will. You know, I think once they outreach to us and they cannot really go back and say, okay, we not going to help you anymore. I hope, you know, they going to continue to, you know, outreach to all of the minorities and the woman 343 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation business community.
Okay. Mr. Nelson, could you please speak to the level of experience OIC garnered as a result of the building of the Convention Center and how those who were trained were ultimately put in the pipeline for real long-term employment?
Yes. It's interesting that we're even discussing -- and I think you may have mentioned earlier about the coming of the Convention Center. And, obviously, they're built for out-of-towners. And there was really no 17 discussion at that point about how it would benefit local Philadelphians and, thanks to a number of different people, convinced the powers to be that it needed to be a dedicated funding stream for two things: One, to ensure that the kids in the city begin to learn about hospitality as a possible career 344 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation option, number one; and, secondly, more germane to your question, Blondell, what we started -- hotels and restaurants represent great opportunities for growth, particularly hotels because it's a zigzag-mobility ladder in that regard. So we began to say we need to look at all the jobs that become available in that regard and begin to train people specifically for those jobs. The jobs at casinos are not very much different from those that are currently in hotels; they're going to need culinary-arts people, food service, a variety of different occupations in which they're being trained for now. And the success of the job has been about 82 percent over the last five or so years. So constantly we're getting calls and have been getting a lot of calls now about placing people in 345 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation hotels and restaurants, and the same principle or model is being transferable, and the casino's truly becoming the training provider. They're good career options with benefits in that regard. And we fully understand the resistance to all of that. But if you really think about it in terms of the city needing jobs, with good-paying jobs with -- they probably will be union casinos, I would suspect. In that record, it just makes a lot of economic sense to be able to do that. Did I respond to your question? Did I respond to your question?
If I may speak on that same question, OIC currently, with the Convention Center, has an internship program that I am very much involved in just as a restauranteur in 346 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the city that the students really get a level of training from. And just recently, the CCAP program came in, which is a culinary program, and they spoke on how much and how rewarding that program is to them. And the Convention Center is one of the few facilities that actually is very involved in instrumenting that program as well as walking students through the building, and they get a firsthand experience at all of the levels of jobs that are available to them that they would not otherwise be aware of. In addition to that, the hospital industry is one of the few industries to date, at this time in the environment that we're in, that someone coming out of high school with a high school diploma can be hired and basically work there way from an entry-level position to become a regional vice president of a company. So -- and it employs -- it's 347 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation one of the largest employers in the country, the hospital industry.
And so what I'm hearing is that there is potentially a career path for those who start in the entry level in the hospital industry.
There's definitely a career path, and there is -- there is no real training that you have to have, coming out of high school and going into the hospital industry. It's an on-the-job training process as well as they have internship programs that most companies do not have.
One of the things, just to embellish it a little bit further, is the revenue that's going to be produced, we believe, by this -- the expansion of the Convention Center, which was kind of the beginning 348 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation of your question, is going to create an amazing synergy in the City of Philadelphia. If you really think about it we're now going to be expanding and be able to attract lager and larger conventions and trade shows. Well, that's going to lead to more hotels, more restaurants, more jobs. So, in effect, there's this domino effect that's going to have a major economic impact on the City of Philadelphia. So we got to kind of look at a variety of those things, but I think it's critically important to ensure that the commitments that have been made, that we kind of hold people accountable for saying, If you're going to do things that will benefit the City of Philadelphia, the level of accountability, I think everybody should be responsible to make sure that that happens in that regard.
349 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation okay.
So it's not shallow talk and not empty promises in that regard. And from a personal perspective, from an organization perspective, we are comfortable at least with the interaction that we've had so far. And more recently, as of week, with SugarHouse again, there is a level of comfort, and there's a commitment to do whatever is being proposed to for the benefit of the city.
So we're comfortable that way, instinctively comfortable, I believe.
And what members of this Council have learned -- for me, starting with the stadiums as the first teaching and training ground, is that unless it's in 350 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation writing, it doesn't exist. So whatever -- whatever those ultimate negotiations are, wherever this may lead, if it's not in writing, it doesn't exist.
You're exactly right. It relates to an earlier comment that you made as well, and we're now beginning at the stage where we've had the conversations and the meetings, as I'm sure that you've had, but as until now, it's time certainly. Let's now talk about that in more If terms in writing 'cause you're absolutely right. So I know some of the folk are here right now, so I'm saying it publicly: Let's get down to the writing side of life, right?
The Chair recognizes Councilman DiCicco. (Panel members get up to leave witness table.)
Just a moment, please. The Chair recognizes Councilman DiCicco.
Thank you Madam President. And good afternoon, everyone. In relationship to the comments that the gentleman made about the Convention Center expansion, well, I fully support that expansion as do the other members of City Council. I'm not totally convinced yet that that is a done deal. I don't have any inside information to suggest it won't happen, but we're not there yet. There's a whole new atmosphere and environment in Harrisburg as it relates 352 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation to issues pertaining to Philadelphia. It's a $700 million-plus project that they're working out the budget now. We don't know if that will absolutely happen. We all hope it will happen, and we hope that, you know, the legislators see fit to make sure they fund that, but that's not yet a done deal, so I don't want to kind of put all the cart before the horse, if you will.
And I've been working very hard with my other board members to make sure that 353 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation happens. I've been working through this Council on various pieces of legislation that will help us get to that point. But I'm not totally convinced that it's going to happen yet.
As to the vendor aspect, and my question goes to the Chamber, I guess, and to Miss Wong as well. I'm not certain of what the act provides, but if it's anything similar to Atlantic City -- and I might be wrong and if someone in this audience can correct me, I'd certainly appreciate it. Vendors are just not chosen at the will of the operators. I believe there's a process by which vendors have to go through -- in New Jersey, it's the Gaming Commission; I guess it would be the same thing here. So with all good intentions on 354 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation behalf of Foxwoods and SugarHouse, and assuming their intentions are good, and I expect that they are, I believe that there's another layer that you have to get to before you even can be retained as a vendor. So despite everyone's best effort to make sure that local businesses and minorities and woman entrepreneurs become a part of this entertainment venue, I think that, again, we're getting ahead of ourselves. I mean, meeting with Foxwoods and SugarHouse are good, but I don't think that's the end game here.
Councilman DiCicco, there is a middle layer, and maybe I was not clear in my statement. What SugarHouse and Foxwoods have done to this point is, they are setting up sessions where we can bring our businesses through that layer. They're explaining what that layer is 355 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation so that we understand it, because that is a layer that we have not had to deal with in the past. And the one thing that I will say, Councilwoman Reynolds-Brown, is that with the stadiums, which I'm very much involved in, they never approached our businesses; we had to approach them. This is the first time that I can say that, as a businessperson as well as chairman of the African-American Chamber of Commerce, I have been approached; I did not have to reach out to approach them. And that has been from both casinos.
Yes, it is, but evidently, no one else did it in the past, so they didn't understand that.
I'm not going to argue with you, but the stadiums was a pretty much a government 356 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation -- it was a government- private-enterprise-funded project. You're talking about an entity here, or entities, that are privately funded, and they're going to make every best effort to convince you that they're going to be good business partners, and we can go on and on and on. But let me -- the other question I have is, has the Chamber -- and I've asked this of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce at previous meetings. Have you done any analysis, any statistics that show that there won't be any negative impact on local businesses?
We are, as well as doing an analysis on the businesses, it's analysis on our community. I -- we -- and I live in Philadelphia.
We, as Chamber 357 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation people, our businesses are here. We live here. Philadelphia's our neighborhood. I live in Queen Village; I have a home there for years. 6
We are doing 10 studies on what it does to our 11 community as well as our communities 12 all around the city as well as our 13 businesses. And our businesses are in 14 the communities. 15 But we look at the casinos as 16 being a positive thing for us.
So -- but if your study suggests that there's a negative impact on your community and communities, both on the social side and the business side, would you still be here? Would you still be supporting the casinos?
I would not be supporting it if I thought it was 358 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation negative.
No, the jury is in on it. We are supporting the casinos based on jobs -- (Laughter.)
Based on our businesses, based on what we think it will bring to our city.
But you haven't done the study to see if there is a potential negative impact. You're studying that now.
So it's conceivable that the study may show that if it doesn't have a positive impact, it has a negative impact.
Do you have the results? Can you share the results? 359 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
We have results that we've been collecting from our businesses and from our staff that's been working on this, that it is a positive thing to date, or we would not -- I would not be sitting here supporting this.
I would appreciate it if you could share that study with this committee.
The results of that study with this committee. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions from members of the committee? (No further questions.)
Thank you. 360 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel consists of Janine Missaoui and Mike Seidenberg. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony.
Hello. Good afternoon, Madam President and Council. My name is Paul Kimport. I live in Fishtown, but I'm giving testimony as a businessperson in both Fishtown and in Northern Liberties. We have a -- I have a partner, and we both own 50 percent of what is Standard Tap and Johnny Brenda's, which is in Fishtown. I appreciate the -- it's a great source of pride that Standard Tap was mentioned earlier as an example. It was really a special thing. But what I'd like to share with the Council is my feelings about 361 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the business culture in those communities. I'm actively in the FNA and I am also a business association president for the Fishtown area and I'm also the Fishtown representative to the drug coalition, so we think a great deal about the quality of business on the avenue and in the community. And for me, living in Fishtown, as well as my partner, who lives in Northern Liberties, it's really a meaningful relationship, the community and the business. It's something that I think is really important to what we've down in both places and our philosophy about business. For instance, I think it's really important to have a community that has a strong identity but at the same time embraces, I think, a lot of diversity. And to that end, I really -- I'm very interested in independently- owned businesses and 362 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation small businesses; I think they give a lot of the character and a lot of the culture that people desire for the community and the general quality of life. And I think -- when I look at casinos, my feeling about that is that it's a monolithic culture that doesn't really support the entrepreneur, the smaller-business owners. For instance, I would use Atlantic City as an example that most people are familiar with to some degree. And I look to Atlantic City to maybe have a business, I would look for a civic association. I've actually looked for one, and it didn't seem to reflect the culture of much community; it really seemed like a hollowed-out idea of a civic association that's maybe more of a relationship between the Atlantic City City Council and the gaming industry. They didn't really seem to have the kind of depth that 363 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation communities I feel have in Fishtown and in Northern Liberties especially, developing so much and with so much work. And I think a lot of that is just pride, and I think that's the biggest part of what I think people want in quality of life and in entrepreneurship in their community. I don't see that as necessarily being the -- the character of the casino culture and between both of those communities. And that's pretty much I guess the way I would look at it is being anti- -- or being negative to my business. And I think that, you know, that would be, I think, a loss for me certainly, and I think it would change the neighborhood that I know and really feel a deep commitment to. That's the testimony as I feel I can most relate to it. Thank you.
My name is Arrone 364 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Dascal (sp.) I'm a business owner and a resident in Northern Liberties. I don't have so much a formal speech to give. But, you know, I fear the casinos clearly. I'm not anti-casino; I'm anti-where they're located. After a couple of testimonies today, I fear the casinos even more. But I'm more here to discuss a word, and that word is "process," something that this issue has really lacking -- has lacked since day one. Had the citizens had a part of this process, I don't think this -- or either location would have been a viable option for a casino. For years, we've lived in a city that's lacked a city planning commission and really relied on civic associations. These civic associations have taken their own time and done a fantastic job building these neighborhoods. And all of a sudden, we have this huge hegemony coming in 365 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation unannounced into our communities and really taking over and destroying what we've worked so hard to really build. But back to the word "process." As a business owner, I was forced into a process. Whether that was meeting with civic associations, going through zoning variances, applying for liquor applications, I was forced into a process. I don't really understand who gives the right to the casinos to avoid this process. Why aren't they forced into zoning? Why aren't they forced into normal liquor applications? From my own experience, it was going through this process that strengthened my business, that strengthened my relationship with the community. And, really, I question why is it that they don't have to go through this process? (Applause.)
Than 366 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation k you.
My name's Frank Maimone, and I'm here as a business owner also. I also live in Northern Liberties with my wife and my two little girls, one of whom's been here with me. And these guys are actually my neighbors. We all own commercial businesses on the same block, actually, in Northern Liberties. And the fact that the three of us sit here says something about our neighborhood, and Arrone and Paul touched on it. Ours is community in its fullest sense. And I think it's also important to point out where we're located in Northern Liberties is less than three blocks as the crow flies to where this casino is going to be, so it's very personal. I just wanted to point out a couple things. Earlier, some people mentioned Atlantic City. And I 367 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation actually have real numbers, and it's not from some pie-in-the-sky thing; it's from the federal government GAO Office, and it was a study done study that was done in 2000. It was a report to Frank Wolfe, who's a -- in the House of Representatives, and it was on the impact of gambling, and they specifically study Atlantic City. And in 1977, which is the year before casinos, there were 242 eating and drinking establishments in Atlantic City, restaurants and bars. In 1981, less than three years after the first casino opened, the number declined to 160. By 1996, which was nineteen years later, the number declined further to 142. Now these are not statistics that you can play with; these are the cold, hard facts. That is what happened. That is a result of what happens because they do serve alcohol, 368 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation they serve booze. And their whole deal is not to get people. There's no 4 ancillary spending; they can use the term. Their goal is to keep you there as long as they can to spend as much of your money, and then you get back in your car and go home. As a business owner, that does scare me. Also between 1977 and 1998, the Atlantic City unemployment rate remained higher than New Jersey and the national rates by two times; it was twice as high as both rates. The rest of New Jersey and the national rate, which were the same at the time, so there was no anomaly, just this one county, Atlantic County, with the unemployment rate. Between '94 and '98 bankruptcies per 100,000 in the state increased from 282 to 555, which is about a double. The rate for Atlantic County went from 385 to 1,019, tripling, okay? The state increase 369 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation again matched the national increase; there was no anomaly in numbers. S. " It's accessible on-line from your Congressperson. I'm sure you guys have access to it. Another couple things that I actually -- when I started to hear about casinos, I wanted to know about it. And I'm not necessarily -- if the casinos can find a place to generate revenue, I don't believe that will happen, but if that make the majority of the people happy, it's fine. The process is broken down, and where they're sited now are the worst possible scenario. But I'm almost flabbergasted when I hear them talk about the revenue that they're going to generate for us, 370 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and some very bright people today pointed out some formulas and statistics. And casino gambling has been around long enough to know how this really works. And I just wanted to read from another report, and that was: "The casino proponents and state and local governments promote casino tax benefits as a benefit. The revenue is a benefit for the recipient of tax casino revenue. However, it is important to realize that this revenue is not new money to society. Taxes result in a transfer of income from one group to another group; in this case, from the casino owner to the state and local governments and eventually a program recipient. So while states collects hundreds of millions of dollars annually in casino taxes, these tax revenues are a cost to casino operators.
It is just a transfer of 371 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation revenue from the operator to the state government and does not -- it doesn't account for any new wealth for our society. And they're going to take that into their operating expenses account and they're going to recoup that loss. And how they recoup it is through those of us that go there and spend their money. And it also gets pitched that it's a way to go towards education or a specific funding. And I'm sure you folks have been in government long enough that if they said, We're going to give you a hundred million a year towards education. Okay, well, that money's going to go towards education. Next year, does that mean that if the budget this year, to use round numbers, was 100 million that next year, it's going to be 200 million? No. The state's going to use that 100 million and they're going to take the 100 million that was allocated there 372 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation before and they're going to allocate it somewhere else. And so it's not like -- it's not this pool of money that's just found that we're going to have here and it's, ooh, what are we going to do with it? It's going to have uses, and they're not all going to be the uses that are agreed upon or that we would like to see. And in closing, I just wanted to say that this is a very important time for this Council and for this state. As the most recent elections hopefully pointed out, the city and the state are no longer going to be -- the citizens are no longer going to be sheep, and we're not going to be led along. And there's going to be -- there's a legacy involved in here. This decision that you are going to make is going to affect generations of citizens here. They're going to affect 373 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation my children. )
They're going the affect the life of my three-year-old and my six-month-old, and they might even affect the decision on whether I choose to live here anymore and to work here. And these are decisions not to be taken lighting. And for you, as individuals and politicians, these have to do with your legacy. It's a legacy of what you want to be remembered for, because long after we're out of this room and this argument is forgotten and whatever comes to pass will pass, there will be the judgment of history that will be laid down upon all of you. And it's up to you to decide how you want that a history to read. Do you want it to be a legacy of trying to make the best of a situation or a legacy of just laying aside and letting everything basically being steamrolled. 374 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And I'll leave it on that note. And thank you very much for your time. (Applause.)
Thank you. Madam President, members of City Council thank you for the opportunity to speak today on such an important issue facing the city. My name is Mike Seidenberg. I live in Queen Village with my wife and two young daughters. I'm a Realtor and I'm also the Republican candidate for City Council in the 1st District, where the two casinos are being proposed. I am here as a resident of a neighborhood that will be impacted by one of the casino developments, and I want to share my opposition to allowing the casinos to be built on the two proposed riverfront sites. I am here also in support of Councilman DiCicco's bill prohibiting casinos from within 1500 feet of 375 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation residential neighborhoods. As we all know casinos are about money. They are being proposed and considered soley for the money they generate -- to the state, to the city, to the employees, and to the investors. In fact, when proponents of casinos speak of their benefits, it's generally only in terms of dollars and cents. Now, on the other hand, as we learned today, many will argue that the benefits are actually illusory, and the associated costs of having more convenient gambling will actually cost the city more than the tax benefits ultimately received. Many studies have shown this -- in fact, we saw this today -- that this will be the case: Increases in gambling addiction, crime, bankruptcy, jobs lost to cannibalization, and social costs will all prove to be real drags on the community, requiring even greater 376 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation resources from an already-tight city budget. While many in the room agree with what these studies suggest, including myself, we are not here today to debate whether the city should have casinos or not. The state has already dictated that the two casinos will be located here in Philadelphia when it passed the Gaming Act in July of 2004 without a hearing or a referendum. Instead, the issue for the city is to decide where best to locate them and how best to insulate existing neighborhoods from the immediate effects of such development. I ask that the sites chosen by the casino companies should not be approved for the following reasons: Number 1. The neighborhood civics are united in their opposition. In a city that has managed its development through the structure of neighborhood civics, it is not time now 377 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation to ignore their voices simply because of the money. Yes, there are proponents of the casinos in each community, and they have a right to speak, but governments listening should not be only attuned to them simply because of the money. I would go even further and suggest that given the size of these developments and how they will impact the riverfront for the entire city, the perceived support of one organization in one community, even if it is the closest one, should not be the only basis for your decision. In my view, this development is larger than one neighborhood alone. Number 2. The riverfront is far too valuable to the city, and allowing casinos to be built on it will actually serve as an impediment to future riverfront development. The riverfront could be a city treasure if it was developed properly. It is 378 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation unfortunate that it hasn't been already. I believe that the reason it hasn't been is because of the lure of casino development, which has given speculative landowners no incentive to do anything else but wait. And this will persist until there's a total ban on casino developments along the riverfront. If these locations are approved as planned, the adjoining properties will likely remain vacant because, in their view, the best and highest use of the property will then be established as casino developments. Landowners will wait for casino expansion or sell to someone else who will await for such expansion. This dynamic is real.
So please be aware that approving one or more casinos on the riverfront will likely prevent other and more appropriate development from 379 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation taking place there. Eventually, gambling proponents may argue that the expansion of casinos is the only way to rid the waterfront of its remaining trash-strewn lots. I would guess that would be okay with casino developers, but is it okay with us? I think not. Number 3. The benefits of the casino -- money -- are available regardless of where they are located. I am not convinced that these riverfront locations are critical to the ability of the operators to attract gamblers. Consider the slot parlors in the region that have already opened. They are certainly not in prime locations, and yet, they are collecting money well above expectations. Finding alternative sites would, in fact, be a win/win/win/win/ win situation for all parties. The government would receive the tax revenues, the unions would get the 380 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation construction jobs, the residents would get their permanent jobs, the investors would see their return, the ports would be able to grow, and the neighborhoods would have their say and the quality of life they so desire to protect. I may have left a "win" out, to be honest with you. My question is: What are we all waiting for? Number 4, and maybe the most important, believe it or not. The state government, in my view, has violated the democratic process. The role of government is to see that everyone plays by the rules. If our own government doesn't choose to follow these rules, then problems occur. In my view, the city casinos issue is one of these problems. And as my uncle always said, what smells going in smells even worse going out. )
And that is 381 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation what we're left with today. The state first attempted this process by preempting the city's authority to determine where these casinos should be located. The Supreme Court ruling, however, in 2005, struck the preemption clause and returned authority to the city. The problem, however, is that the state has chosen to ignore the ruling and proceed with the process, as if preemption was till intact. More recently, the State requested the Supreme Court to remove the from our primary ballot; and, against legal precedent, the Supreme Court obliged and yet still has not given an opinion as to why. This cannot be the democratic process our founders envisioned. Let's be clear: We are here today because the city has the authority to approve or disapprove the sites in question. Ideally, the city 382 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation would have chosen the site best for the city and then let the casino operators apply for the licenses from the state to build and operate there. That way, the best operators would be opening casinos on the best sites. Assuming the best operators have already been selected, the city should now identify the best sites through an open and transparent process. In so doing, Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, will turn integrity to the democratic process. In my view, this is far more valuable to our city and state than any amount of money could ever be. Please deny zoning to the SugarHouse development and pass the 1500-foot buffer in order to protect our neighborhoods from casinos, no 22 matter where they're eventually located. Thank you.
383 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation You're very welcome. (Applause.)
Hello. I'm Janine Missaoui. I live in Harrowgate, and I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak today. It's a great honor. This is a landmark itself, one of the largest brick-on-brick constructions in the entire world. Philadelphia has a great deal going for it. We have affordable living, for one; that's why I'm here. I am a native New Yorker, and I watched the process of turning Battery Park, one of the most ugly waterfronts you could possibly imagine, into a beautiful esplanade that is world-class. It didn't cost a lot of money, and the spillover economics from it have been tremendous over the last 384 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation years that I know of. It was not given to a narrow constituency like a casino. The city has a great deal of history, also. And I see a lot of unrealized potential in this city, having come from New York. Pardon me, I'm nervous. I've seen the city face a great deal of problems with budgeting, which, I think, have a lot to do with a citizen disconnect, a lack of public transparency, as has been demonstrated with the entire process with casinos, and a lack of oversight and public analysis of where these things are really going. And as a bookkeeping contractor, I'm not seeing how this really adds up. For years, we've been hearing stuff about tax cuts, but meanwhile, that means cuts in services also. And then there is pay raises voted behind closed doors. Year after year, 385 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation hot-potato budget problems with SEPTA. the DOT cannot manager to keep the roads clears for commuters during a snowstorm. And tens of millions of dollars that I understand that were supposed to go into the I-95 interchange program that everybody needs to do now, if we're going to put these casinos in place, was actually sucked up into a budget hole, I guess, ten or fifteen years ago, some $60 million, so I don't know where that's coming from again, now that I-95 will need better access, if we're going to put casinos on these sites that have been chosen. And I think that's a really tremendous issue. Driving from my neighborhood up in Harrowgate, up by the Frankford Creek, down towards Washington Avenue, to go to something as simple as my dental appointment can take an hour if I go even as early as 386 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation 4:15 to head down that way. It takes over an hour, and I end up being late, so I have to leave at 3:30 to get to a 5 o'clock appointment. I think that's a really bad idea to put something that's going to add all of this additional traffic in that sort of an area. I think that the southern end of the city, where we have an abandoned Navy Yard, to I understand, would be a of better; or someplace nearer to the airport, where, if travelers really wanted to come from out-of-state, it would be much more convenient to them. I cannot imagine someone coming to someplace so inconvenient as Delaware Avenue. Furthermore, if we look at the difference between Atlantic City and Cape May, which, in the '70s I remember my relatives really, really looking at the situation very, very closely. Both of them had the same -- pretty much the 387 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation same situation going on -- deteriorating waterfront, the old painted-lady hotels were falling down, there were fires, there was vandalism, abandoned buildings, and huge budget deficits; basically the same kind of problems I'm hearing today in Philadelphia. One chose revitalization, one chose casinos. One now has a beautiful place where anybody would want to go, and the other place has a level of crime which seems a little bit on the high side for me and, not to mention, the problems that have happened with their local government with casino insiders getting a little too involved in local government and things of that nature, resulting in numerous convictions.
Given that we're the fifth largest city in the United States, I really don't think we should be facing some of these problems. We have a 388 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation really great waterfront, and we're going to give it away to a windowless venue that really, really doesn't care about the view. And also, another thing I haven't are heard much about is the environmental impact of putting a building that large on what's basically filled-in swampland. I worked in insurance in my younger days, and I know that no 13 insurance company in the world is going to insure any building on waterfront for flood insurance or anything to do with weather. This is all done through federal tax dollars paid out by the taxpayers. So if this casino gets swamped by a storm, we're all going to be paying for those damages. There is no 22 insurance available; it's reinsurance through homeland security at this point, and it's all one hundred percent tax dollars that would pay for any 389 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation damages. Now, here we also have -- we're going to give this to a narrow constituency, and it seems like the Wall Street Journal's June 11th figures show us that this market is already saturated, so I really wonder what the fiscal benefit of this would really be. Okay, let's see. I really think that the state has steamrolled us here, and I think that it's very, very inappropriate that there has not been as much citizen review of this entire process. And I'm sure that you folks have also not been given quite the opportunity to respond to the legislation that the state and this Gaming Control Board are proposing. Furthermore, I think that, looking at the resumes of the gambling commission in the State of Pennsylvania is a little scary; these are all industry insiders with, from what I could see, really no citizen oversight, 390 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation no ability for the citizens to override any part of their decision. I have a real problem with that. I do not feel that this is a democratic process, and I'm very sad to see this happening in my neighborhood. I'm not directly affected with a view or anything of that nature. I don't live in Fishtown; I live in Harrowgate, a few miles away. But still, this is my city. I really, really love living here and I think that the citizens need a much greater role in this entire process. So I'm really hoping that we can get at least a buffer zone to assist our neighbors in keeping their neighborhoods intact. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. (Applause.) MR. McPHERSON: Our next panel consists of Ed Grose of the Greater 391 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Philadelphia Hotel Association, Amena Young, Deb Diamond, and Angela Patterson. (Witnesses come forward.)
Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman and members of the committee. My name is Dr. Debra Diamond. I am the director of research and strategy at the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation. We're a private nonprofit founded to promote greater Philadelphia through marketing and image-building to increase business and promote the region's vitality. Our CEO, Meryl Levitz, served as a member of the Economic Impact Committee of the Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force, which was established by the mayor to gauge the impact of casinos on Philadelphia and recommend how best to capitalize on 392 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation their introduction into our communities. I worked closely with her on the study, and she sends her regards, but she had a conflict and was unable to be here this afternoon. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak about the addition of gaming to the range of activities that tourists will be able to enjoy during their visits. Philadelphia has recently come into its own as a great tourist destination. 9 million overnight leisure tourists in 2005, and that's a 55 percent increase since 1997, when GPTMC first began its image advertising for Philadelphia. Philadelphia has been rediscovered, and when people come 393 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation here, they're not disappointed. As we say in our ads, they fall in love with Philadelphia, and Philadelphia loves them back. In addition to our unique position as America's birthplace with unparalleled authentic historic sites, we have outstanding arts, culture, dining, neighborhoods, and boutique shopping. We're an active city too. Whether someone wants to watch sports in our new stadiums or play them with their friends in Fairmount, there's something here for everyone. The growth and the activities our tourists have been able to enjoy has meant more tourists are visiting, they spend more time, come back more often, and spend more money. In fact, the increase in tourism product has been key to tourism growth. The economic impact of all travelers in 2005 was $10 billion, with leisure visitors accounting for 60 percent of 394 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that. Saturday night, the most popular night to visit for leisure guests, has been the highest night for hotel occupancy in Philadelphia for the last couple of years; and now, Saturday night has the fastest-growing hotel rates as well. GPTMC just celebrated its tenth anniversary, and over this last decade, we have actively promoted Philadelphia as a premier destination. Philadelphia is now known as a comeback city and a great place to live, work, and visit. We can and we must continue to build on this momentum. A city has to continually grow in order to thrive. We firmly believe that casinos will be yet another reason for people to come here, experience our city, stay longer, and come back. As the mayor's Gaming Advisory Task Force found, a significant portion 395 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation of those who will visit the casinos will come from another state. This visitation help in two ways: Many of those who come here initially for gaming will discover reasons to stay longer or come back -- Independence Mall, our museums, shops, restaurants, and parks, for example. And, two, visitors drawn here for our arts, culture, restaurants, and history will be more likely to stay longer in order to fit in a casino visit. Both of these scenarios are good for the city and for the city's businesses and hotels. They are there for good job opportunities and tax revenues too. GPTMC tracks what our blockbuster exhibitions -- like the Tut exhibition going on right now -- add to our city. For instance, the Dali exhibition, which came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2005, 396 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation generated 52,000 visits to other attractions, 20,700 hotel room nights, and $55 million in economic impact.
Handled well, gaming has the potential to be an all-year round blockbuster for the city, for tourists, and for the businesses that benefit from tourists coming here. The expansion of the Convention Center, which will be funded with gaming revenues, will also help grow our tourism market. For all of these reasons and more, please do not pass any legislation today that would delay any construction of these gaming facilities. We have too much momentum built *up; we should not risk it. Thank you for your time and. Consideration.
Good afternoon. My name is Ed Grose, and I'm the 397 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. My association represents pretty much every hotel in Center City, Philadelphia, and 87 hotels throughout the Delaware Valley. I am here today to urge you to support -- to not support the newly- proposed legislation that would delay or prevent our city from being able to attract a major source of revenue through gaming. The Philadelphia Gaming Advisory Task Force, which I worked on in 2005, through a lot of hard work, community involvement, and vision, compiled a comprehensive report that covers every facet of the gaming initiative. This includes site selection, casino design, economic impact, and the social impact gaming will have on our community. The revenues generated by gaming in Philadelphia have well 398 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation been -- have been well-documented. According to the task force, the two casinos will raise approximately $686 million in revenue the first year of operation and will reduce the Philadelphia wage tax by percent for 8 residents and 8 percent for 9 nonresidents. 10 Philadelphia -- 11 (Laughter.) 12
Excuse me. I was 13 quiet while all of you were testifying; I'd appreciate the same courtesy. Thank you. In addition to tax savings for residents, the two casinos will create 1500 casino jobs and between 2,000 and 4500 new jobs in ancillary operations from the casinos. Indirectly, the casinos will also create between 3900 and 6400 new jobs from growth and other industries that service patrons and businesses that service casinos. 399 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Roughly, 1,000 construction jobs paying between 30 and $34 million in wages will be created during the construction of casinos. This will result in another 1800 jobs that will be created by indirect construction- related jobs, which will pay roughly $73 million. The casinos have pledged to be good corporate citizens to the their neighbors and the city. Foxwoods has agreed to spend $5 million on a proposed nine-step plan to help mitigate traffic congestion. They know that in order to bring people back to their location, they must provide easy access to their establishment. The greatest impact that gaming will bring is that it is the biggest funding mechanism for the largest publicly-funded project in the history of the Commonwealth, the expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center. 400 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation The Pennsylvania Convention Center is the economic engine of our great city; and without functioning for this project, it will not happen. 3 million people. Thirteen new hotels have been opened with more than 4200 rooms. Even with this success, we could have been done much better. 6 million room nights, because the center was booked and/or the meeting was too large for our present convention center. Just yesterday, I was contacted by the PCVB, and they are trying to convince Bio to bring back their convention in 2013. And without the expanded center, they're not even 401 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation going to consider it. Another thing to consider is that if construction does not happen for the Convention Center as of this summer, there are conventions in 2010 that will be able to pull out of their contracts if construction does not happen. And if we delay with the casino construction, then it could put the project in jeopardy. 5 occupancy points to Center City, which will create compression in the Center City hotels as well as our hotels in the Philadelphia suburbs and South Jersey. This represents 280,000 additional room nights once the newly-expanded center matures. When the building size is increased, it is projected that an additional 2,000 hotel rooms will be needed, resulting in 1500 permanent hotel jobs. 5 million in the first year alone. 3 billion in total economic impact. Besides economic impact, gaming will also take advantage of Philadelphia's greatest natural resource -- the Delaware riverfront. Other cities have turned waterfront into beautiful places that can be enjoyed by both visitors and residents alike. Such examples as San Antonio's Riverwalk, Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and San Francisco's Marina District show what can be done along the Delaware River. Currently, the river is blocked by trash-filled lots with chain-link fences surrounding them. The casinos will be an excellent 403 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation catalyst towards development of the river. Finally, the casinos will provide residents and visitors another entertainment choice in Philadelphia. The casinos will provide -- will not only provide gaming but will also provide entertainment and much-needed night life to our city. I also want to point out an article that appeared in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer that listed that the -- that stated that the casinos in Atlantic City have already been affected by the two casinos that are in Pennsylvania.
That shows that a lot of the dollars that were crossing the Delaware River and being brought down to Atlantic City being spent by Pennsylvania residents are now staying in Pennsylvania. And we feel that -- one of the things we looked at on the Gaming Task Force was capturing dollars that were 404 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation leaving on motor coaches every day that were headed down to Atlantic City. I'd like to thank you for your time. And, hopefully, I was brief enough. I know it was a long day for everyone, and I appreciate the opportunity.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Our next witness? MR. McPHERSON: Our last panel is Jim Paylor, Daniel Hunter, Jethro Heiko, Rich Garella. (Witnesses come forward.)
Should I say "good afternoon" or "good evening" -- let's see. Good afternoon.
Thank you. Madam Chairwoman, I'm sitting in front of you with a little (indiscernible) in my heart. I know you must be tired, and I know that your 405 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation colleagues must be tired, and I have to say that I'm tired of listening to myself, so I don't know if this is going to benefit or help this cause today, but if I get a little emotional, I apologize in advance because I've become very angry through this whole process. And I've listened intently today to all of the discussions, and I think something that seems very complicated has to be simplified, and I hope my comments will help do that. I can't promise that they will but I hope that they will.
Once again, my name's Jim Paylor, and I'm vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association, and I've been vice president of the international for 17 years. I was born and raised in South Philadelphia. I 406 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation graduated from South Philadelphia High School. My jurisdiction as the vice president of the international is, I represent all longshoremen locals from as far north as Portland, Maine; to as far south as Corpus, Christie, Texas; including the Great Lakes, Puerto Rico, and also into Canada. And I'm very familiar with what's happening in the maritime industry as a result of having those responsibilities. I have to say to you also today that my feelings are a little hurt because I wish Pat Gillespie would have asked me to sit at the table with him, okay? And I think starting out with why I was asked to be here as far as the relationship of the casinos and jobs is probably something that people want me to convey to you. Growing up in South Philadelphia, I used to play at the playground, okay, at Second, and I was 407 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation successful in beating your colleague James Kenney many times in the basketball court, but he was a much better pony ballplayer than I was, and he wound up defeating me a few times in that game. But that was an era when the longshore industry was thriving. And all of the piers that are now have -- that have now been knocked down and been replaced by places like Wal-Mart and Ikea and Home Depot. When they were working, okay, the playground staff was operating. Every pool that was in your city was filled with water, okay, and it was based on the revenue that was coming from the thriving industry at that time. My father was one who worked along the waterfront prior to me going through, okay, so I'm very familiar with it. When I started there, I used to walk from my house, okay, at Third 408 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and Tree, and I would walk to Pier 38 and I would walk to Packer Avenue Marine Terminal and I would walk to Piers 38 and 40, and I would walk to Pier 80. Pier 80 and Pier 38 and 40 are facilities that worked at full capacity back then, and they still work at full capacity right now. If you went to those two facilities, you would find millions of dollars of product, mostly newsprint and paper products or wood pulp. My concern -- and that's what brought me as into this issue as a special interest group in the very beginning -- was what study was performed by any government agency that would show what the impact would be on casinos on those thriving facilities. And at numerous meetings, I had the luxury of participating with different government agencies, including the City Planning Commission, and I've had some 409 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation of the same discussions with Janice Woodcock that Councilman DiCicco had this morning, asking what their responsibility was in coordinating good, healthy, compatible development not just along our waterfront but on our city as a whole, and I got some of the same answers that Frank did. Okay, there was confusion at the end of the discussion, and there was questions on what really should be developed. And, to my surprise, she asked me, as a labor leader, well, could I pull people together that would help do the developing for the city, which would include looking at development of casinos, port expansion that we desperately need, which has recently been announced that we will have, and including finding places for the food center and finding places for Sysco Company, which has outgrown their facility. And I was a little surprised 410 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that the City Planning Commission would give that to me as a challenge, but I was willing to take that challenge on.
I also said to her that the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority should be more involved in the developing of the port area, including finding other sites for the industrial facilities like the food center and the Sysco Facility that I just mentioned. But it's -- what I did learn, going through this process, is that there's total confusion within the different entities who could have and can develop good, healthy development for all segments of the industry. And I think that's what's lacking. And I also think that's where there's some short-sightedness on my union brothers' parts, who think that the answer is just, build the casinos where they are designated to be built. I am not opposed to casinos; I actually go to casinos once in a while, 411 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation but I do think there's a place for adult entertainment. I don't think the adult entertainment should be in any neighborhood. And I think it was proven here today by two people, one being a professor and one being an economist, who have summarized everything that everybody in this room has been saying not just today but in previous meetings: The economics return that are supposed to be there will not be there; the job generation that is supposed to be there will not be there; and the tradeoff that people think they're going to get as a result of casinos will not be there. The social issues that have been come up 'cause I am a parent that still has thee children that are in South Philadelphia today. They deal with the normal social ills that all our children have had to deal with nobody is insulated from it. That 412 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation means drugs, that means alcohol; it's a part of our environment, unfortunately. I had a recent experience where my daughter and myself had to attend a funeral of a 21-year-old kid from our neighborhood who overdosed. And when she came to sit with me, she broke down and cried, and I got mad at her, and I hollered. And I said, "I don't know what to do with your generation and I don't know what's going on with it," and I was hollering at my daughter that "you have to consider what's going on with your own peers" and lectured her. " And then I called her at 413 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation o'clock that night and said to her, "I handled myself wrong. I didn't have to deal with that when I was your age. " 8 And she hit me with a 9 startling message. " Now, that's from the Second Street area, Whitman area, 22 funerals. And I said, There's something wrong. The next day in my office, I sat with other union officials who are from that neighborhood, and between us, we got up to 40 families who have experienced what my daughter has experienced so that we could talk about 40 deaths as a result of drugs. Now we all preach, Don't smoke, don't drink, don't take drugs. And we do our best as parents, and it's out there. And while we're experiencing that, we think that the 414 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation magic wand that's going to address the economics that's going to make our kids feel better is to dump an industry, one that is known to create other vices. It increases crime; you've heard that. It increases suicides; you heard that it. Increases breakdown in other families. We heard today, and it's all on the sly, that gambling addiction also leads to other drug and alcohol addiction. It's not the answer that the city is looking for. What is the city looking for? They're looking for good, family- sustaining jobs, one that when an individual works 40 hours a week, he can pay his bills, he can pay his mortgage, he can pay his car payment, he can pay his utilities, he can pay his cable bill. And he feels good at the end of the week that he did something substantial that provides for a family. That's what's missing. Now, I heard a number of 415 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation things here today from certain people and one being the chairperson of the SugarHouse.
He said there's not another project in our area of their magnitude that will create the type of jobs that they're looking at. And I thought, He must not be from this area, because he hasn't been reading the papers, because I want to go back to the port, okay? With the announcement of dredging by our governor, okay, and the announcement of port expansion, we have presented a project, which, Madam Chairwoman, I did present to you, and hopefully, we get to present it to the full City Council. But that project in itself, okay, has also been given to the PIDC for one specific purpose. They have land that's need for us to meet the goals of port expansion, okay? And we actually asked PIDC to do a peer review on our presentation. 416 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And the reason why we asked them to do a peer review on our presentation is 'cause our presentation, if the proper planning is done along the waterfront and we expand the port the way it should be and we protect and maintain the jobs that are there now, we can also generate up to 130,000 new family-sustaining jobs. )
That's in addition to the 45,000 jobs, which 8,000 of them are direct and the rest are (indiscernible) type jobs, but all dependent on international cargo. So it would be in addition to those 45,000 jobs. Now, most people say, Wait a minute, you're going to create 130,000 jobs? It's not rocket science. F. Richardson who has done this study for 417 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation us. And the owner of that company, which, again, is the one who's world-renowned, has recently made a statement to USMX. USMX is all the major shipping lines that carry 90 percent of all the cargo around the world. And they asked this consultant, How do you stay out of conflict with other ports who are competing against one another? And he said based on the growth of cargo that is being projected over the next ten to fifteen years, every inch of maritime space that our country has available to them is going to be needed to do accommodate that cargo. And that's where those 130,000 jobs in our area can come from. Now, in addition to that, people say it's still a lot of jobs. We have three Class railroads -- Canadian Pacific, Norfolk Southern, and Conrail -- okay, that work out of one 418 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation area in South Philadelphia, which is just adjacent to the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal and the proposed Southport new expansion project. That is something that not one other port in this country -- not New York, not Houston, not Norfolk, not Long Beach, not Oakland -- they don't have that available to them for distribution of that cargo. That means that we will be in the position to move cargo across this country better than any other port in this country, so Philadelphia would go from being a secondary port to a primary port for distribution. It's all a part of the presentation that I made to you. Some people still say, Well, that's not enough -- how do you still generate 130,000 jobs? It's very simple. 5 million containers that we will be generating, 419 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation and they are New York and they are Norfolk and they are Houston and they are Long Port, California, and you will see, in those ports, they have over that 130,000 job mark that I'm talking about. So it's not pie in the sky, it's not pull-a-rabbit-out-of-the-hat; it's reality. Now, I say that in contrast to some of the conversations and discussions that were had at this table. I never want to critique or be critical of any worker in this country, okay, but I have provided at a previous hearing of this City Council a collective bargaining agreement from Borgata, and it's an outline of the job classifications that work at Borgata. And in that outline, there's 35 different classifications. And out of those 35 different classifications, only 10 of them -- I'm sorry -- only 3 of them pay more than $10 an hour for a 420 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation starting worker in that casino. 50 an hour. And that's 35 different classifications. Now, what I did -- and I presented this at previous forums -- is, I took an Excel program, and I put $12 an hour in there, okay, and then I deducted the taxes and then I deducted the normal expenses for any family, which is your mortgage, your car payment, and your utilities, and at the end of the month, for somebody who's working at that rate and you pay an average mortgage that comes out of South Philly or Fishtown or West Philly, for that matter, you're going to be a thousand dollars a month short of making ends meet. When you talk about despair, that's the reason that people go to work, work 40 hours a week, can't pay what their budget requires them to pay. 421 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And what do they do? They turn to crime. They have to supplement their income, okay? Now, even if you took the husband and the wife and you gave them both a job in the casino, and now they're going to be making double that, who's taking care of the children?
So then you have to add the expense of day care and everything else. It's a system that, right now, does not work. All I'm saying is, let's learn from our past and learn what has created a good tax base with good family-sustaining jobs in our past, and let's apply that to the future with the one industry that's thriving, okay, not just in Philadelphia -- nationally and globally. That will help settle the problems. I heard of that there is no 23 requirement to go into the hospitality industry. The only requirement to go into the longshore industry is that you 422 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation have to pass a drug and alcohol test. You don't have to have a high school diploma, you don't have to have a college degree; you just have to be willing to work and you have to be willing to learn the machinery. I think that fits a big portion of the people from our region, when Congressman Chaka Fattah, all through his campaign, says one out of every four people is living in poverty, okay? So I think that that helps us. Now, do I criticize casinos? By looking at the economics compared to what I was forced to look at, I learned the things that you have been hearing all day, about the social ills, about the problems that come when somebody gambles their mortgage payment away and they lose their family, all right? So then you have to sit back when we're in the position of making decisions, knowing that everybody's lobbying City Council to do the right 423 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation thing. Here's what I learned coming to this process. What do we agree on? We agree that the state legislature dumped this in City Council's lap and left it up to you to resolve. And then I heard the City Solicitor say, Well, that's not necessarily true. Well, from Senator Fumo's response letter to myself, he makes it very clear that he went to great lengths to make sure that City Council has zoning control over this matter. Somebody has got to be communicating with each branch of the government to make sure know that what we're doing. The working-class people is relying on you, because it was dumped on you, to protect the interests of them, okay, the people that have voted you in and asked you to represent them. You've done a great job right now under 424 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation a lot of conflict and a lot of turmoil and a lot of people pulling at you in different ways. I'm sure you're tired of listening to the debate over casinos; it's probably not going to go away. The reason why it won't go away? You have a woman sitting back here who told me she's retired, okay? She's not retired; she's working seven days a week 'cause she's on the computer communicating with everybody else in the different neighborhoods, okay, 15 that have all formed together. She's 16 not retired, she's working, okay? ) 18
Here's what the 19 state legislature and here's what the 20 casinos don't have a right to do: They don't have a right to say to the people that live in those wards, to the person that's retired and living on a fixed income, that the only wealth that they have is their house, which is their 425 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation home, which makes it their investment. They don't have a right to say that sorry, your investment's not worth anything anymore, but the facts that you've heard before about the houses that are going for sale and the one's that are selling are very low as a result of the announcement of the casinos is real to these people. They also don't have a right to the new person, okay, or the younger person who paid times the amount 14 that I paid for my house on Durfor 15 Street, okay, they paid 20 times the 16 amount and now are worrying, Well, will 17 hold the value of their investment when 18 they're struggling to make. They don't 19 have a right to tell them that your 20 investment's not going to be worth anything anymore. So all of the numbers and all of the special-interest groups that come in front of you are going to come up and they're going to put their best 426 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation foot forward, and they're going to tell you their story, and all I'm saying is, let's make it real, let's simplify something that's somewhat complicated. When I hear our state officials saying that one of the benefits is going to be that somebody who makes less than $40,000 is going to get a rebate of a hundred dollars a year, whoop-de-doo! That means I'm going to get 28 cents a day, okay? And I asked that person and I've asked guys that I know that are in that category, Would you sacrifice that 28 cents a day if one person who is going to lose their home as a result of aggressive gambling, okay, who's going to lose their home, would you sacrifice that 28 cents a day? And the one guy said to me, "I'll give you a dollar and tell you to keep the change every day." Then I said, Would you sacrifice that 28 cents if you knew only one family, as a result of 427 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation aggressive gambling, has somebody who commits suicide? It's not whether it will; it's when will it, okay? It's been proven based on all the cities that have inner-city gambling. It's going to happen. And everybody's response was the same: "I'll sacrifice that 28 cents." Then I said, Well, they're talking about putting $5 million into the school system. We all know about the condition of the school system, okay? And when you look at other inner cities -- I heard it today, okay? Will Detroit turn a better product out as a result of them getting casinos of their high schools? Will New Orleans turn a better product out of having casinos, okay? Will we? Has Atlantic City done it? I think, in all cases, the answer to that's no. 23 But can $5 million be made up? Absolutely. Good, healthy development may be able to take a SugarHouse 428 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation facility or a Foxwoods facility, and you may be able to put more healthy development, which will give more return with the construction and maybe another box store or maybe some more commercial development with shops and with stores and with restaurants. (Applause.)
(Indiscernible.) ... or maybe we could have access to our waterfront that could be then used to supplement the school system. Or maybe we could build a high-level recreation center, okay, that has a fishing pier. Or even more importantly -- or more progressively, okay, since we now have clean water in the Delaware River, okay, which I do swim in, okay? Maybe we'll have that beach area or maybe it will just be a water area or a water-park area that will generate more revenue and give the people who live around the river wards who have dealt 429 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation with the brownfields and who have dealt with the speculators that think they now have gotten their gold rush and that their brownfield's going to become a casino, give the people who live in the area something better, okay, and something more healthier that won't create the social ills that we know about but still can generate a better quality of life and still generate better income. And with that, I thank you. (Applause.)
Good afternoon. Please identify yourself for the record.
My name is Jethro Heiko. Thank you members of the Rules Committee and Madam Chairwoman for allowing me to speak. I'm one of the founders of Casino-Free Philadelphia. I'm kind of in shock as this is the second time in a week where I followed a dynamic speaker, and it's 430 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation difficult, but I'll -- and I'll do my best to be brief. Again, my name is Jethro Heiko. I live at 139 East Allen Street in Fishtown. I've lived on the river side of Fishtown since 2003, when I moved from Boston, where I was a community organizer who did things, including -- I built a day-care program for 39 children and helped stop the taking of acres of eminent domain 13 for a proposed Red Sox Stadium, which 14 was never built. 15 Since moving to Philadelphia, 16 I've been working to support efforts to 17 stop eminent domain in various 18 communities and around issues of 19 affordable housing and good jobs. 20 When my wife and I first 21 learned about the proposed SugarHouse 22 Casino within just a few hundred feet 23 of our home on Allen Street in 24 Fishtown, we were shocked. At the 25 time, the SugarHouse proposal was just 431 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation one of three casinos proposed within a half mile of our home. Within weeks, we were reaching out to our neighbors; you heard from some of them today: Charlie Hocker on Allen Street, who lives directly across the street from the proposed SugarHouse site, and his daughter, Joanne Sherman, who lives next store to me. We talked with them. And we tried to make sense of the slots parlors with the 24/7 liquor licenses, the 5,000-car parking garages, and 6 million visitors a year. We didn't understand how such a thing as SugarHouse Casino could be proposed so close to our homes. On June 1, 2006, I and many others founded Casino-Free Philadelphia about one year ago, which began with a rally at Broad and Spring Garden Streets. Hundreds of residents from across the city gathered with a unified voice against casinos coming to 432 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Philadelphia. " On the trip were residents from Nicetown, Fishtown, Northern Liberties, Queen Village, Center City, Roxborough and West Philadelphia. Today, like one year ago, our efforts have unified a city that often struggles to bring people together to solve the problems we face. Earlier, someone said -- criticized Daniel Hunter, who's sitting next to me, who's a friend of mine, for holding a sign against SugarHouse in Fishtown. Daniel does not live in Fishtown, it's true, but one of his close friends does and many other friends behind me. He lives in West Philadelphia, and as someone who's worked closely with me on this issue, I 433 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation appreciate all of his support, as do many people in Fishtown. A year after these efforts, besides making many friends and building, I think, a very strong community and a movement to oppose casinos coming to our neighborhoods, I believe there's wide agreement, and Jim spoke about some of the things that I think are widely agreed upon. The first is that Act 71 was a mistake. It provided no standards for how casinos would be built in our city, and it ushered in a process that has been fundamentally flawed not just at the state level but at the city level, as we've seen from the backroom, behind-the-scenes efforts by the Planning Commission to advance SugarHouse Casinos without discussions with the civic groups and neighborhood residents who will be most impacted. I think there's also agreement that although casinos may bring some 434 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation positives, there's increasing understanding of the negatives, much of which has not been studied yet and much of which we, including myself, learned a great deal today about. I believe there's also wide agreement that casinos don't belong on our riverfront.
Finally, I believe there's wide agreement that casinos don't make good neighbors and that the closer they are to residents, the worse they are. As someone who lives on Allen Street, the closest residential street to a proposed casino in Philadelphia, I am very aware of the negative impacts that the proposed casino would bring if it would be built, which it won't be. If we put aside the slots issue for a moment and look at what is proposed on merit alone, this project should be rejected immediately. First, it goes against zoning enacted in 2002 that was won by 435 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation residents and the City Council. That zoning was put in place to protect local residents, as we've talked about today, from the harms of entertainment uses, including nightclubs, bars, et cetera. That zoning restricts uses such as a casino from the riverfront and Delaware Avenue and includes the proposed SugarHouse site. Second, SugarHouse introduces 6 million visitors a year to a residential area without any buffer zone. Third, SugarHouse takes an area currently without a crime problem and turns it into a police state, with security cameras proposed on my block and other blocks of the Riverside section and police presence, from what I hear, 24/7 on blocks that currently see little crime. And as I learned last Thursday night, the closer we live to the proposal, the more police we'll have. 436 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation And I just don't think that's appropriate for a residential area. At last week's meeting in Fishtown with the most immediate neighbors of the proposed site, residents from Allen Street, Richmond, Wildey, Shackamaxon, Marlboro, and East Columbia made it clear to Councilman Clarke and Councilman Greenlee that the proposal must be resited. We told them that we have not heard any plan to address the problems we would face; and that, in fact, there could never be such a plan precisely because such a massive development, with or without slots, does not belong in a residential area. Some problems cannot be solved and the resiting of SugarHouse Casino directly across the street -- excuse me. The siting of SugarHouse Casino directly across the street from people's homes and in a residential area is one of those problems. 437 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation I wanted to present, which is also in my written testimony that I'll be giving you, a Web page from the SugarHouse Casino site, which, as of last night at midnight, was still on their website. I'll take them -- if they take it down today, I'll take it as an apology, but we won't stop fighting against their efforts. On the website, it says -- this is like the benefits -- this is the rationale for why their site is a good site. If you look at the final line, it says that there's a natural community buffer with I-95. For over a year now, SugarHouse Casino has waged a relentless public-relations campaign, which includes a very big lie. The big lie is that no one lives near the site; and, better yet, that there's a natural buffer zone. That natural buffer they speak of is I-95. The Pennsylvania Gaming 438 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Control Board used the myth that the neighborhood was protected from the casino as justification for choosing SugarHouse to receive one of the two licenses. The problem, of course, is that I-95 does not buffer Fishtown. There is no buffer of any sort between SugarHouse and the residential community that lies between Girard Avenue and the river, an area that contains well over 500 homes, some of which are within just 150 feet of the proposed casino. The one thing, though, in which SugarHouse and the Gaming Control Board and I and the majority of Philadelphians agree on is that casinos do need a buffer, so that's great. I'm not sure why we spent so long having this discussion.
So I ask today for support of Councilman DiCicco's 1500-foot buffer zone, which it sounds like SugarHouse 439 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation would support, which will protect all Philadelphia neighborhoods from casinos. On the other hand, Councilman Ramos's bill to move SugarHouse forward makes a mockery of the existing zoning laws put in place to protect a residential neighborhood from nightclubs and other adult uses, which would also apply to casinos. In order to successfully implement the buffer zone and protect the residential neighborhood where I live, it is imperative that you reject Councilman Ramos's bills. These bills are the result of a flawed process at the city level. Behind-the-scenes, backdoor politics advanced SugarHouse Casino at the Planning Commission the same way in which a corrupt process bought us Act 71. That it took an outgoing Councilmember to introduce the legislation for this negative element 440 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation in another District Councilmember's area demonstrates that there is little support in City Council for this proposal. Given what is being proposed, I would expect that to be the case. And let's get back to what is being proposed -- a negative development that includes a multi-acre parking garage that will house 5,000 cars on the Delaware riverfront; no 13 less than six -- six 24/7 liquor- license establishments across the street from people's homes in a residential neighborhood, within 1500 feet of the Old Brick Church and probably within 1500 feet, or very close to the only significant green space on the Delaware riverfront, Penn Treaty Park. " I don't know how we got to a point where such a project was ever considered, but today, it is time to put it to bed and start addressing the real challenges Philly faces rather than piling on more problems. I ask you again to please vote against Councilman Ramos's bills and to vote for Councilman DiCicco 1500-foot buffer bill. We will stand by our neighbors forever. They're like family to us. And we count not just our neighbors on Allen Street but our neighbors throughout Riverside, throughout Fishtown and Northern Liberties, in every neighborhood in the city. )
We will remain united until these casinos are moved. And with that, I want to thank you.
442 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Thank you. (Applause.)
Thank you. My name is Daniel Hunter, and I'm the cocoordinator of Casino-Free Philadelphia, along with Jethro Heiko. And I appreciate your patience. And you've seen me here before. And like a lot of us, I'm not necessarily happy to be here because it's not my first choice of places where I'd like to be. However, I'm appreciative for those who are still here for listening to all of our testimony. Casino-Free Philadelphia, with allies, collected 27,254 signatures in 443 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation under three weeks to support the referendum; and most recently, had 13,592 people participate in one day in Philadelphia's ballot box from every part of the city. One of the reasons why Casino-Free Philadelphia has grown the way it's grown is because our concept is very simple: It doesn't make sense to put casinos this close to residential neighborhoods. Everywhere I go in every part of the city -- I'm from West Philly. Whether I'm in West Philadelphia, Fishtown Airy, Northern Liberties, Queen Village, Mt. Airy, East Mt. Airy, anywhere in the city, if I tell people that they're trying to build a casino within 200 feet from people's homes, they say that doesn't make sense and it ought to be moved. It makes a lot of sense. It's why it was so easy to get 27,000 signatures, because I didn't have to 444 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation ask many people; I only had to catch a couple of people, and every single person would sign, almost without hesitation. It is probably not too bold to say that Casino-Free Philadelphia is one of the most vibrant dynamic citizens' movements in recent Philadelphia history. We've changed the landscape of Philadelphia politics in a way by saying that we can change a done deal. People were told by the state that this is a done deal and that there's nothing we could do about it. I was personally told by many people that there's no way we could get media attention on such an issue. We have done so. I am part of a movement that's teaching Philadelphia to stand up for itself and that saying we're not going to accept the state's callous disregard of Philadelphia. We represent a new 445 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation movement that's standing up for ourselves both on this issue, and we have every expectation to stand up on other issues to the state as well, because the state -- we need a new relationship with the state. The current relationship that we have is unacceptable. And casinos is a terrible, tragic example of that. It's not the only example. Our goal is to protect the citizen's right to have input, to reduce corrupt politics, and to protect Philadelphians from the harm of casinos. We believe this is best done by no casinos in Philadelphia but have offered what we believe is a reasonable minimum standard of 1500 feet, which City Council's already supported. Our current slogan is: "Move them or lose them," because the current locations are intolerable and will be actively opposed. Anyone who wants casinos to 446 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation come into the city would speed up the process considerably by having them relocated outside of these current locations. Otherwise, we will continue every effort to prevent development that will destroy our neighborhoods, as we well should. This is not a threat; this is simply an explanation of where we stand, which is, if someone wants these casinos to be built, they should have them moved. We're still here. The other folks aren't still there. We have lasting power and we will still be here. (Applause.)
I'm going to just skip through some testimony about the obvious -- the process has been broken, insider politics, attempted done deal. I'm not going to talk about the fact that now we have to have a mayor and the governor arm-twisting a lame-duck 447 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation Councilmember in order to put a bill up for consideration. I'm going to skip through that. The fact is, casinos are not respectable enough as development in order to come in through the front door, and they've disrespected the respected state, they've disrespected the city, they've disrespected City Council by trying to come in through the back door like a thief in the night. This is -- I believe Mike said it well, which is: If it's dirty coming in, it's dirty going out. This is how casinos are going to continue operating in the City of Philadelphia. You've noticed that they've got no community benefits agreements, they have no trust from any of the respected civic associations, there's no agreements that have been made with any of the chambers of commerce, with any of those groups, there's nothing in 448 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation writing. These guys are now playing a public-relations game; they're not playing a serious negotiations with the city. They're trying to push through what they had as a done deal, and they're trying to continue to operate as if it's a done deal and do the backdoor politics, which is why you have the City Planning Commission being a salesperson, as someone said, as opposed to doing her job and talking about how do we create a vibrant waterfront. (Applause.)
Every single planner worth their grain of salt who looks at this proposal and says, What do you want to build on the waterfront, if you're trying to build a vibrant waterfront, you don't put a box casino. It's just -- it's very straightforward. When Penn Praxis brought in an outside expert from Seattle, that's the 449 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation first thing he said. He looked at the proposal of the waterfront and he said you can't create a vibrant waterfront with two casinos along the riverfront. The casino problem has continued to escalate because SugarHouse and its counterpart, Foxwoods, have assumed that their political connections would win over against citizen wisdom. They're now feeling more desperate and are exaggerating their positions, and they've begun to start putting forward unrealistic numbers even beyond the unrealistic numbers they've already started with. As the most recent Wall Street Journal article suggests, the economic gains by casinos are far less substantial than claimed, if they exist at all. SugarHouse has now chosen to inflate its numbers and confuse facts to strengthen their position. I'll 450 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation give you three examples, and I'll try to do it quick. First are their claims about job creation. SugarHouse, in its most recent pamphlets in which they then used to organize fact, claims that your signature could help bring 6,000 jobs to Philadelphia. They say that the official -- quote, that's the official estimate made by the Pennsylvania Gaming Advisory Task Force of the number of jobs that will be created by SugarHouse. In reality, the task force never mentions SugarHouse; the task force makes some guesses about possible job creation and comes up with a range which includes nearly half that number. No study related to SugarHouse or the actual implementation of a casino so close has been done, and they're twisting facts in order to make their case. As will be mentioned -- as has 451 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation been mentioned by numerous others, the only serious study thus far on job impact by Fred Murphy suggests that SugarHouse and Foxwoods will result in a net loss of jobs, including many of those business members who you heard from earlier such as Arrone, who works with Rustica Pizza. I was just really struck by Arrone's testimony because citizens have now had to become experts because the experts have failed us. Secondly, during the last hearing, SugarHouse suggested that their casino -- this was the CEO mentioning this -- would not bring more crime to the neighborhood; and yet, on the other hand, they're openly talking about the need for more police on the street. What are those police doing? SugarHouse wants to downplay the impact on crime because they know crime carries with it serious economic costs. The economic costs that have been put forward suggest, once again, 452 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation that the casinos in these locations will not bring the revenue that they're claiming. And because they refuse to acknowledge the social issues of crime, of addiction and the various social problems that they create, they don't have the plans to address them. They don't take them seriously and, therefore, they are unprepared to build in this city. And, finally, now that they are under such pressure, they're scrambling to defend their poor choice to not listen to the public up until now. And instead of addressing those problems, they're attempting to paint a picture of mass support for their cause. They're trying to frame this as a Fishtown problem, not including those affected from Port Richmond to Queen Village, including the Northern Liberties neighborhood, which is immediately nearby. Every civic 453 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation association that they have interacted with wants them to move. If they had the numbers of the mass support, they would show you the results of a poll.
They've done polling data in Fishtown, they've done polling data up and down riverfront; we know this because our people tell us. They've got the calls, they've received these calls about polling data. We know that they've done several polls, including very aggressive push polls, but they haven't released those results, and I'll tell you why. Because their polls show what our polls show, which is that in almost every neighborhood in the city, 80 percent of people do not support these casino locations and are supportive of a 1500-foot buffer. This is consistent with our polling data, which you've received previously. This is consistent with Philly's ballot box, which we set up at 454 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation every state rep district, and the results were very clear: 95 percent of people said yes. But, more importantly, we had 68 percent voter turnout, which meant even if every single person who passed by our voting box that day said no, we clearly still would have won by an overwhelming majority. That's why, instead of -- I lost my place. But that's why, instead of allowing this thing on the ballot, they sued to take it off because they knew the 1500-foot buffer would win by a landslide, and it would be embarrassing and it would be committing. , and both mayoral candidates support the 1500-foot buffer. That's 455 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation the short list of hundreds of labor unions, businesses, citizens groups, activist organizations, churches and synagogues who have supported and worked for the 1500-foot buffer, and I have a complete list attached to my testimony -- actually, a somewhat complete list; it doesn't include political folks, and there's a bunch that -- it's a little bit old. Instead, they're engaged in a classic corporation technique of Astroturfing, supporting the development of a front grassroots organization that they call FACT, which is fiction, whose roots only go as deep as they can buy. And let me quickly clarify myself. Our organization is deeply dedicated to democracy and value people's rights to speak their minds. Some good people have different opinions from that of Casino-Free Philadelphia. We asked, for example, 456 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation for a larger room for this session so that all people of opinions could have their bodies and voices present in this room, and I appreciate, Councilwoman, that you allowed that to happen, because that was used. We ran an election anyone where could share their opinion on the buffer and had an independent monitor verify our neutrality on the day of the election. Unlike SugarHouse, we have been honest, we have been forthright, and we have not stretched the truth to make our point. We have not lied to the City Council, to the state, or to anyone. I just want to close by saying that our goals as Casino-Free Philadelphia include creating a more healthy, balanced relationship with the city and the state, where the city shows the strength needed to protect itself from the abuse the state has 457 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation heaped upon it, 'cause the fact of the matter is, you guys did not create this problem; this was handed to you as well. We're asking you as allies, not as enemies -- we're asking you as allies to join us in this struggle and to continue the support that you've already shown. Personally, I think there are some very important issues that we need to work on in this city. I think gun control laws are an example of that. The same Supreme Court that is now challenging people like Queen Village's right to defend their own neighborhood and saying that they have no standing, that same Supreme Court is the same Supreme Court that threw out gun control laws in Philadelphia. There's a serious issue that we have to address in terms of the power balance relationship between the city and the state. That's one of the 458 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation things that we're working on.
We're working very hard both at addressing this at a city level and also at a state level. There's a lot of responsibility heaped upon the state, and we're very much working on that. People earlier, just before Council session, were making calls to state representatives to begin putting pressure on them to change the situation. As you know, we've also worked on creating a 1500-foot buffer at the state level, which has already been widely supported. Bottom line: SugarHouse is taking advantage of our weakness. " The ability of the state and SugarHouse to push us around is in relation to our patience with their harassment. Like a bully, they'll keep pushing us around until we stand up for ourselves, and I believe that this movement, our movement, can represent a 459 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation shift in that relationship. I'm asking each one of you to help us and stand up for the city and the people who have been so brushed aside by the Goliath casino industry. Councilman DiCicco has spent more hours than he wishes to remember listening to the people of his and other districts on this issues. It's been a lot of hours. He knows that we will not go away. )
And that we are right in our desire for cleaner development and an open process to create a vibrant waterfront, which can never happen with casinos. Please vote down Ramos's bill 20 unanimously and pass the 1500-foot minimum standard and all other pieces of legislation introduced by Councilman DiCicco. Thank you very much for your time. 460 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation
Thank you. Thank you very much. (Standing ovation.) MR. McPHERSON: Our last witness is Anne Dicker. (Anne Dicker is not present.) (Witness comes forward.)
Good evening. Kindly identify yourself for the record and proceed with your testimony, sir. MR. McGETTIGAN: Yes. My name is Michael McGettigan, and I can say I know how you feel. I got here at 8:41 today. Philadelphian since 1954. I got an 11-year-old in the public schools. I run a bike shop, Trophy Bikes, at 31st and Walnut in University, and I recently -- in October, I opened a new shop on Liberties Walk, in Northern Liberties, which is part of my interest in this. And I guess I'll -- an awful 461 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation lot of this I've been crossing out all day because I see about the money shifting. From a selfish standpoint, every dollar gambled is a dollar that is not going to buy a bicycle or school books or movie tickets. And so, I want some of that money. Sadly, I saw one of my customers, a very good customer, and he's an attorney for SugarHouse, so I'm getting a little money from the gambling business. Yeah, so the thing -- econsult -- very -- lots of number are thrown around, and probably the biggest number, we're all worried about our property values, and my property values are great. I live on the well-planned waterfront, the Schuylkill, 27th and South. 5 and no Home Depot, no casino. They put in a strip of asphalt for bikes, a dog run, and a couple of swings, and my house is worth 250 grand 462 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation today. And so it's not hard to make a river worth a lot of money; just let people get to it. Now, one of the things that's beyond my little property values -- and it was a little shocking to see GPTMC in here rooting for gambling because they spent a lot of money building up a big piece of property, which is impossible to value, and it changes all the time, and that's Philadelphia's image as a city, who we are, what we're supposed to be. And no one can really agree on what it is, but we're trying to keep it looking like something. It's a complex image, and don't always take the best care of it. Sometime the city of homes blows up a block. Or we took Love Park, which was a worldwide symbol of skateboarding, and bulldozed it so that you can sit down and eat lunch. So we don't always do the best job. And in some parts, our image 463 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation is a little bit sad, but we have to look at 'em. Where there's just a few blocks down, they're digging up a space where Philadelphians lived who were owned by other Philadelphians. And that's an issue that persists today, I think, even in this room. I looked up at the unions, and I saw mostly people that looked like me. And I have to say I looked at the anti-casino forces, and I see mostly people that looked like me. And I see the split a little bit, and maybe no 15 one's mentioned it, but it's split a little bit on race, I think that says a bit about the desperate straits of Philadelphia's minorities and Philadelphia's blacks, that they're ready to reach out to anything for economic help. And I think that says -- I can't picture in the 1960s or the 1980s -- and I was there for that -- someone coming out and saying, All 464 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation right, I'm going to help the black community. You can polish slot machines and do the carpets because our schools can't prepare you for anything better. And I got to say for my son, I hope for something better for him than a casino job. And I think that should be something that all kids in Philadelphia should aspire to, and our schools should prepare 'em for something better than a casino job. Now, that's not to say -- I work with my hands all day long, I fix bikes. And if my son comes back and says he wants to be a longshoreman and he's happy doing that, I know he got people their food, he got people their automobiles, he got people their clothing, and he did something to help people; he didn't throw out false hope or deal a bunch of cards out.
So I think if we get the city mixed up in something like this, the 465 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation image that we built for so many years and that we're trying to protect, we're going to be up against image meisters, and they just need people to come in here and bust our slots. GPTMC's efforts to define Philadelphia as a city of history and economics and medicine and all of the different kinds of night life are going to be stepped on by a giant casino program. These people are experts, and I think that's what they'll do, and that's what they'll pitch our city to look like. Finally, a lot of things have happened in -- a lot of Philadelphia's biggest successes are things that didn't happen. In my years in Philadelphia, which aren't that long, I can remember all of these done deals, such as the -- there was going to be a baseball stadium on North Broad Street, we were going to put an expressway through Chinatown. This very room was 466 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation supposed to be a three-level traffic island; Ed Bacon had the plans for it. All that was going to remain was the tower. I think we're all pretty glad that the crosstown expressway didn't happen. Oh, I forgot. There was a monorail that was going to go from the Post Office at 30th street past the Liberty Bell. If he had done all of these things -- among them, the crosstown expressway -- I think we'd be really a few steps closer to being Detroit instead of the city we are today. ) MR. McGETTIGAN: Thank you.
Do we have anyone else that would like to 467 6/13/07 Rules Committee - CED Legislation testify? (No response.)
Thank you. This will conclude our public hearing. * * * 468 6/13/07 Rules Public Meeting - CED Legislation
We will now go into a public meeting, and the Chair recognizes Clarke.
Thank you, Madam President. Madam President, during the public hearing, there were two references to amendments, one to Bill 10 No. 070456 that would create -- that would require, prior to the passage or the enactment of any CED, a special services district must be created, nonprofit, that would be in a position to provide resources to support the surrounding community. At this point, I would like to make a motion on the amendment to Bill 19 No. 070456. (Motion seconded.)
It has been moved and seconded that the amendment, as proposed earlier regarding Bill No. 070456, be adopted. All those in favor will 469 6/13/07 Rules Public Meeting - CED Legislation signify by saying aye. Those opposed? The ayes have it, and the motion carries. Councilman Clarke?
Madam President, as indicated earlier in the public hearing, it will be called Exhibit A, which was actually the plan of development that will be added as an amendment to Bill No. 070458, so I make a motion that that Exhibit A, as referenced, be adopted -- that that particular amendment be adopted. (Motion seconded.)
It has been moved and seconded that the amendment to Bill No. 070458 be adopted. All in favor will say aye. Those opposed? The ayes have it and the motion carries. This committee will stand in 470 6/13/07 Rules Public Meeting - CED Legislation recess until Wednesday, September 26th, at a.m. 4 Thank you all for your 5 patience. 6 (Applause.) 7 (Proceedings end at 5:25 p.m) 8 * * * 9 10 471 C E R T I F I C A T E I HEREBY CERTIFY that the proceedings of the City of Philadelphia Council Committee on Rules are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me on Wednesday, June 13, 2007, and that this is a true and correct statement of same. __________________________________ JOSEPHINE CARDILLO Registered Professional Reporter (The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the same by any means, unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.)