SugarHouse Wins Help From Gaming Control Board

The state Gaming Control Board this afternoon agreed to allow the investors behind SugarHouse, a casino planned for the Delaware riverfront in Fishtown, to consolidate their assets to help secure financing to start construction.  The investors used one corporation to pay for their $50 million state casino fee and another to pay $70 million for the land on Delaware Avenue at Shackamaxon Street.  The lender wanted those assets united in one holding company so the investors needed the board's permission to transfer their license.  You can read more about that in today's story.

A group of about seven protesters from Casino-Free Philadelphia stood this morning outside a PNC branch office at 16th and Market streets, holding a large red banner that said: "PNC -- Lead the way: Don't lend to Neil Bluhm's casino."  Bluhm is one of the SugarHouse investors.  The anti-casino group said on its web site that "it is rumored" that PNC is lending Bluhm money for SugarHouse.

SugarHouse asked the Gaming Control Board to seal two exhibits it submitted with its request last month that provided details on its lender, including financial agreements and interest rates.  The board agreed to that as well.

Dan Fee, a SugarHouse spokesman, declined to say if PNC is the lender.  "We are very grateful of their support and will move quickly to continue moving forward and break ground," Fee said after the board's vote. "We have no comment or response to Casino Free or anything they have said."