A slight delay in next phase of SugarHouse expansion

Because of a production error, this story was incomplete in some editions of Friday's South Jersey section.

The SugarHouse Casino in Fishtown will grow - just not right away.

At a hearing Thursday before the state's Gaming Control Board, Greg Carlin, SugarHouse's chief executive officer, said the owners of the casino still expected to expand the gaming complex with a parking garage and more casino floor space.

But they are still working out the design and development details, Carlin told commissioners, meeting at the Convention Center. He said the plan should be ready by the end of the year.

Carlin told regulators that SugarHouse had acquired more land north of its 22-acre site on the Delaware River.

"That gives us a better footprint to spread out a little," he said. "We're pushing our original plan to the north."

In 2009, the SugarHouse investors promised the board that they would build a casino in stages. The first phase - an "interim casino" with 1,602 slot machines and 43 table games - opened in September.

The investors previously said they would start the next phase this November.

Complicating the expansion is a lawsuit filed by the Philadelphia partners in SugarHouse against the principal Chicago investors, including Carlin and billionaire gaming veteran Neil G. Bluhm.

The local partners, led by lawyer Richard A. Sprague and auto magnate Robert Potamkin, are demanding in a Delaware court that the Chicago partners give them more say in the business.

Dale Miller, deputy chief of enforcement counsel for the gaming board, asked Carlin if the lawsuit could affect operations at SugarHouse. Carlin responded, "It's hard to say."

Since opening, SugarHouse, the city's first casino, has generated $61 million in tax revenue for the city and state, said general manager Wendy Hamilton. She said the facility employs 1,000 people, about half of whom are from Philadelphia.

SugarHouse, she added, also has contributed $680,000 to a special services district that invests in community projects and improvements. Carlin testified that SugarHouse would like to extend a riverfront pathway to the north, connecting the casino to Penn Treaty Park.

In assessing the casino's impact on the surrounding neighborhood, Carlin said warnings about increased crime and traffic have not materialized.

Paul Boni, a volunteer with Stop Predatory Gambling who was the only critic of SugarHouse to speak at the hearing, said there were hidden costs from compulsive gambling that have to be weighed against the benefits of the casino.

"This government program," he said, "is addicting citizens and pushing them deeper and deeper into debt."

The board will vote on extending the SugarHouse license after the staff compiles a suitability report in a few weeks.