Obstacles remain to moving casino from Phila. waterfront

While Foxwoods Casino may now be willing to reconsider its planned waterfront site, significant obstacles remain to moving the proposed slots parlor elsewhere in the city.

Those include reimbursing Foxwoods for more than $100 million it has spent, the specter of legal action by other potential casino operators, and the same sort of community opposition that has hindered plans for the Delaware River site.

Thursday, Foxwoods principals, after meeting a contingent led by Gov. Rendell and Mayor Nutter, agreed that they would explore moving to a site other than their chosen parcel on Columbus Boulevard.

"We won't be speculating on any potential new sites," spokeswoman Maureen Garrity said yesterday. "If and when we have something to announce, that's when we'll talk about it."

Any site has to be outside the 10-mile noncompetition radius drawn around casinos in Chester City and Bensalem. That squeezes out Philadelphia International Airport as well as much of the city. Foxwoods said an alternative site would not be on the waterfront.

That leaves only a handful of properties that have been discussed over the last three years, all with their own considerable share of baggage.

They include:

The former Budd plant in Nicetown and East Falls, where Trump Entertainment and former 76ers president Pat Croce wanted to build a casino.

The former Whiskey Yard, immediately south of the Walt Whitman Bridge and adjacent to Crazy Horse Too Gentlemen's Club on Columbus Boulevard.

Three Center City possibilities: a 2.8-acre parcel at Eighth and Market Streets, the Gallery at Ninth and Market, and the Girard Estate parcel on Market between 11th and 12th Streets. The Gallery is owned by Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, whose chairman and chief executive officer is SugarHouse principal Ronald Rubin. The sites have great public transit access, but heavy street traffic.

A former power plant adjacent to the Betsy Ross Bridge.

The sports complex area. While much of this area falls within the 10-mile noncompete zone, portions do not.

Any alternate site will involve a set of familiar issues, including some degree of neighborhood opposition, traffic problems, and the city permitting process.

In addition, Foxwoods has sunk $170 million into the project - $70 million for the property, $50 million for its license, and another $50 million for "engineering, legal and other related costs," Garrity said.

Rendell also said Foxwoods would want to be sure that its license is secure. Foxwoods and SugarHouse won the two gaming licenses available for Philadelphia in a competition among five applicants.

Those losing applicants - including the TrumpStreet project, Pinnacle Entertainment's proposal for the waterfront in Port Richmond, and the Riverwalk Casino at Delaware Avenue and Spring Garden Street - could prove the greatest stumbling blocks.

Location was one of the prime factors cited by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board when it chose Foxwoods and SugarHouse over their competitors.

"In Philadelphia in particular, location was important, because it had to do with generating income," Thomas "Tad" Decker, the former gaming board chairman who presided over the selection process, said yesterday. "Everything being equal, the decisions may have come out differently.

"I just don't understand why the three who didn't win wouldn't seek relief allowing them to bid on the same sites," Decker said.

Yesterday, two of those suitors did nothing to dismiss that notion.

"We are certainly looking at what our options are," said Bill Miller, a Riverwalk principal.

Bob Pickus, a vice president with Trump Hotels & Casinos who spearheaded the Philadelphia project, said elimination of the Foxwoods location leads back to the Budd site, where TrumpStreet was to be located.

"It leads to the location we had picked, and that's where the project should go, and it should go with some level of involvement from the original applicants from that site," said Pickus, whose group had predicted that traffic and neighborhood concerns would doom the riverfront projects.