Foxwoods: On the river, swimming upstream

Here's the good news for the meandering fortunes of the proposed Foxwoods Casino: It returns to its troubled Delaware River site with many of the booby traps cleared from its path since last year, when it abandoned the waterfront for a more attractive site in Center City.

Now the bad news: Foxwoods has just 21 months to get up and running with a newly designed project in a stingy credit market. And the traffic problems, angry neighbors, and hostile lawmakers haven't gone away.

On Friday, the Gaming Control Board ordered Foxwoods to ditch its plan to use the old Strawbridge's building at 801 Market St. and instead build on the original site, Columbus Boulevard between Reed and Tasker Streets.

This time, Foxwoods has several advantages. The state Supreme Court has already approved Foxwoods' original plan and appointed a special master to quickly resolve disputes with the city over permits. What's more, the court has consistently ruled against neighborhood groups and city officials, including the mayor, opposed to placing the casino in South Philadelphia.

Finally, all decisions on development will be made by the city Planning Commission - not City Council, where political opposition helped hold up approvals.

Still, observers and critics say Foxwoods will be hard-pressed to meet the Gaming Control Board's deadlines, including having a new design in three months, a financing plan in six months, and the casino up by May 2011.

On Friday, Foxwoods lawyer F. Warren Jacoby called the timetable "a concern."

Mayor Nutter, who helped chase Foxwoods from the waterfront last year, said those requirements "are very demanding, and given the challenges that they have faced to date, there are real questions as to whether Foxwoods can meet those standards."

At the time, Nutter insisted that the project's traffic problems were unsolvable and that the casino use and design were incompatible with the city's waterfront plan.

On Friday, he said, "It was a bad site a year ago, and it remains a bad site today."

The odds are slim that the investors could ever finance the grandiose resort they envisioned in 2006.

The plan was to spend $670 million for a 700,000-square-foot slots parlor with restaurants, entertainment venues, and a high-rise hotel. But after the stock and credit markets crashed last year, Foxwoods lost its commitments from lenders.

The Strawbridge's site would have been a far cheaper alternative. Two floors of the historic building were already cleared and ready to go for slots. According to sources, it would have cost well under $100 million to open.

But a major investor in the project - the Mashantucket Pequot tribe in Connecticut - was facing financial difficulty of its own at the start of the year and could not be counted on for more money.

Brian Ford, an executive for a partnership that represents key local investors in Foxwoods, said the tight market would force the principals to build an interim casino and then phase in the rest of the project. The group includes the charitable trusts for the families of businessman Lewis Katz, developer Ron Rubin, and Comcast-Spectacor chairman Ed Snider.

Ford said anything they came up with would have to be competitive with existing casinos in the Philadelphia area, namely PhiladelphiaPark in Bensalem and Harrah's in Chester.

Consider Philadelphia's other slots parlor: the SugarHouse Casino, straddling Northern Liberties and Fishtown on Delaware Avenue. That development group is spending $474 million on an interim facility.

In the neighborhoods surrounding the South Philadelphia site, Foxwoods should not expect a hug.

Rene Goodwin, a board member of the Pennsport Civic Association, which represents the community directly opposite the casino and which fought Foxwoods' first attempt, said her board was "disappointed" in the decision and could not imagine supporting the move.

"We really need to look over everything and see what our options are," she said.

State Rep. Michael O'Brien, a Democrat whose district borders the Foxwoods project, predicted that Foxwoods wouldn't be able to get through the Army Corps of Engineers waterfront permitting process and other hurdles within the time period.

He was joined in his criticism by State Rep. William Keller and State Sen. Larry Farnese, the Democratic legislators whose districts contain Foxwoods, and City Councilman Frank DiCicco.

"The problems that existed on that site when it was first planned to be there haven't changed," Keller said. "I don't think any of that has changed, and I don't think Foxwoods has addressed any of it."

But a Keller ally, electricians union chief John J. Dougherty, said he would work with Foxwoods to make the project happen if the owners reached out to address the community's concerns and elected officials worked to bring stimulus dollars to fix street and sewer infrastructure problems in the neighborhood.

Dougherty was president of the Pennsport Civic Association when it opposed the project. He said Foxwoods investors, with the exception of developer Peter DePaul, had never engaged the neighborhood in discussions.

But once the decision to move to Center City was made, he and a coalition of other building-trades unions were in favor of the casino.

Dougherty said in an interview Friday that he believed Foxwoods would have complicated important port issues, including the construction of a new fruit warehouse in Southwest Philadelphia and progress on the SouthPort shipping facility. Those issues, he said, have largely been resolved.

He also said economic conditions had changed to make the need for construction and permanent jobs paramount.

"I don't have a problem at all, and look forward to working with Foxwoods to make it work," Dougherty said.

His view wasn't shared by James Paylor, vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association, who still holds that casino traffic would interfere with port business, conflict with long-term waterfront plans, and harm the neighborhood. The Navy Yard, he said, would be a better site for the casino.

Whether local opposition and Casino Free Philadelphia, galvanized with opponents from the Center City fight, can slow Foxwoods down remains to be seen.

But Jeff Rush, president of the nearby Queen Village Neighbors Association, recalled that both Foxwoods and SugarHouse - which is still working through its own difficulties to begin construction - had been presented as a "done deal" nearly three years ago.

"Frankly, I think it's the beginning of the argument," Rush said, "and not the end."