Roy Exum: Let's Get A Casino
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Wednesday, July 13, 2022 - by Roy Exum
Let’s face it – Chattanooga needs a new baseball park like Erlanger needs another shooting victim. So if it’s only money we want, let’s trace our roots all the way back to John Ross and call on our Cherokee brethren to help us to establish a lavish casino on the US Pipe-Wheland brownfields. That’s right, a big gambling center splat dab in the heart of the Southside so that people who drive by on the freeway are certain to “stop for lunch and bet a bunch.”
No city in America, outside of Las Vegas, can offer a greater tourism treat and brother, when we can offer a Saturday night show with a bunch of high-stepping Rockettes types, we’ll draw every farm hand halfway to Nashville, Knoxville, Birmingham and Atlanta.It’s a marketing mecca, I’m telling you, and if you think the Aquarium bet was big 30 years ago, you ain’t seen the like of what a little “legalized sin” can accomplish in this river city.
Think about the future! Marijuana is a mere inch away from being legalized in the United States and we should be building those coffee shops like they have in Amsterdam on the Southside right now. The key to business success is providing for the people’s “wants” and to flirt with an $80 million ballpark that most people don’t want is ridiculous.
For starters we already have a baseball stadium, one that draws 4,000 or so on its best night. Add the fact that Nashville will have a major league team within the next five years and will immediately compete with Atlanta for fans who live just a two-hour drive away. Sports on TV is constantly growing and, with armchair access so easy, the prospect of filling a new baseball stadium becomes increasingly dim.
It is argued a new stadium will become a multi-use center; don’t fall for that foolish patter. How many non-baseball events have been on the Lookouts field in the last five years? Take April through August out of your events calendar (the Lookouts season) and there simply aren’t many winter reasons that demand a large outside venue.
No, baseball is a fool’s folly so as I wonder what on earth a man like Jack Lupton might do, I think of little Cherokee, N.C., and tiny Sardis, Miss. These are the closest casinos to us and you’ll be surprised how many people from this area like making quick trips to ‘nowhere ville’ where there is nothing else to do except feed the slots. Now compare how many of us buy a lottery ticket no matter the cost per gallon of gas.
Think, but dream bigger … what would make people in Nashville, Knoxville, Atlanta, and Birmingham flock to our town? The kill shot is that we have something for the kids to do when Pops has an urge to make a wager. New restaurants and shops full of stuff that glitters will fight for space if we can lure and maintain a crowd and, heck, we might even get a daily newspaper.
Granted, I don’t know how casinos work; who gets what percentage of the ‘house’ or the tax dollars? I do know we desperately need school buildings and that children go hungry when schools are closed. I know we need “at least three” vocational schools. I also know there is $150 million in indigent care every year at Erlanger Hospital and that the city of Chattanooga donates only its shooting victims in return.
That’s right. City Mayor Tim Kelly just announced a “woke” $30 million effort to help with diversity and such, this when the city gives not a penny to assist our Level One trauma center. I’m thinking a casino could help fund other burdens, too, for both the city and the county. Think of the hotel revenue and the additional jobs.
There are the nay-sayers who decry gambling addiction. Please, when liquor stores are now open on Sundays and the illicit drug Fentanyl – called “The Silent Killer” – is today the leading cause for death in the United States’ 18-45 age group? You’ve got online betting and even the lottery so don’t believe a casino is exactly the den of iniquity you were once told to believe.
In truth, the odds are a casino will never brighten Chattanooga’s skyline but I’m willing to bet it would make a bigger mark, year-round, than a baseball stadium. The Southside project needs a magnet venue alright, but as the ever-wise Confucius taught us, “Never let a leader lead you down a bad path.”
