Almost nobody wants the defunct remnants of Harrah’s Tunica Casino. Owner Caesars Entertainment has scratched a planned auction of the property because nobody except stalking horse TJM
Properties has shown an interest in the building. TJM specializes in senior-living facilities. Is Tunica about to become the retirement capital of the South? I doubt even TJM thinks that, as it only offering $3 million for Harrah’s Tunica, barely paring so much as a hangnail off Caesars’ debt burden.
* Take Windsor Locks out of the running for a third Connecticut tribal casino. In a party-line vote, city selectmen nixed a plan to put a casino at Bradley International Airport. “We just lost an opportunity for job creation and tax revenue for the town of Windsor Locks and the state of Connecticut,” lamented dissenter Steven N. Wawruck (D), after a hotly debated town meeting. Rep. Peggy Sayers (D), meanwhile, raised the prospect of circumventing the host-community vote by creating a back-door approval process in the Legislature. That’s a tall order, what with RFPs due by Nov. 6 and a Dec. 15 decision promised by Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun. Still in the running are East Hartford, Enfield, Hartford and East Windsor.
* Despite the Florida Legislature’s inefficacy at expanding the state’s casino industry, anti-gambling activist John Sowinski isn’t taking any chances. He’s created an Astroturf movement, Voters in Charge, which would reserve the power to authorize new casinos and forms of gambling solely to citizen initiatives. Extending an olive branch to the Seminole Tribe, Sowinski said it was not his desire to “limit the ability of the state or Native American tribes to negotiate gaming compacts [for] casino gambling on tribal lands, or to affect any existing gambling on tribal lands.”
* Scarlet Pearl Casino is still two months away from opening in D’Iberville, Mississippi, but city officials are already merrily
spending the $1.3 million the casino is expected to generate for the 
city. Palm trees have been planted along the I-10/I-110 interchange and “We gave our employees a good pay raise,” City Councilman Henry Toncrey said. Rainy-day expenditures including the purchase of a trio of fire trucks, including “a platform ladder truck that would be needed to fight a fire at the casino tower,” according to the Biloxi Sun-Herald. Slightly under a million dollars remains unspent, and will be dedicated to public-safety and educational budgets. By comparison, what do gaming opponents have to show for themselves?
* Scientific Games‘ Roger Snow is taking a contrarian position in a Vegas Inc. op-ed, arguing that the casino industry has already become too fixated on millennials, and that you could get blotto fast
if you took a drink every time the word “millennials” drops from a gaming executive’s lips. Although he calls millennials “the most knowledgeable generation when it comes to gambling,” he predicts that “the only gambling [they] will be doing on their iPhones in the foreseeable future will be swiping right on Tinder.” That’s a bold, if risky, wager to make, even though it does look more and more like the younger generation will not follow the Baby Boomers’ footsteps in filling the ranks of bread-and-butter casino players.
