Arundel Mills slots site gets OK 

Posted: 7:38 pm Tue, December 22, 2009
By Nicholas Sohr
Daily Record Business Writer

The casino planned next to the Arundel Mills shopping mall seemingly escaped the setbacks and delays dogging Maryland’s fledgling casino industry on Tuesday, while Baltimore officials called for more openness in the process to bring slot machines to the city.

Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold signed zoning legislation that allows for the construction of a 200,000-square-foot casino next to the mall, the plan proposed by The Cordish Cos., a Baltimore developer.

The county council passed the bill Monday night — along with a competing measure that would have limited the county’s single gaming facility to sites south of Route 32 — eliminating the mall as an option. Leopold vetoed the second bill Tuesday.

He said the Arundel Mills casino would help raise revenue crucial to the county and state, and follow the mandate of voters who approved slot machine gaming in the state last year.

“The legislation will generate nearly $30 million annually for the county, and nearly $450 million for the state,” Leopold said.

Cordish wasted no time after winning zoning approval, said its president and chairman, David Cordish. The developer filed the first of its permitting paperwork with the county Tuesday, expects to begin construction in the summer or fall of 2010 and plans to open the doors of Maryland Live! Casino in the fall of 2011.

“The majority of the people have wanted this, and the majority of the people are now getting what they want,” Cordish said Tuesday. “It turns out to be a perfect place for slots.”

Cordish said the company may decide to open a temporary casino while the permanent structure is being built.

“I wouldn’t rule it out but it’s not easy to figure out how to do in this layout,” he said.

Casino plans include 4,750 slot machines, restaurants and a live entertainment venue to be built outside the west entrance of the mall. The casino would create 2,500 construction jobs, employ about 1,500 in permanent positions and pay $337.4 million in taxes to the state and county, according to an analysis of the plan conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The casino, expected to cost more than $300 million, would be the largest in the state.

Opponents of the plan, who have vowed to continue their fight, argue a slots emporium is inappropriate for the mall’s suburban surroundings and that voters were duped into believing the casino would be located at a racetrack. Many pushed for the Anne Arundel County Council to limit gaming to an area of the county that includes Laurel Park,  but not Arundel Mills.

Rob Annicelli, president of the Stop Slots at Arundel Mills community group, said he needs more than 18,000 signatures to get a referendum on the project on the ballot in 2010.

Annicelli said with the combined efforts of community groups and many in the horse racing industry, he thinks the effort has a “fighting chance.”

County approval comes to Cordish nine months after the first casino-related legislation crossed council’s desk. The seven-member board held hearings on a series of bills as the pressure mounted for them to act. The state commission granted Cordish a conditional license on Dec. 7, putting the ball squarely in council’s court nearly a year after Cordish emerged as the only viable bidder for the county’s gaming license.

Still, Cordish said the delays didn’t push back the project’s timeline,.

“The council was thorough. It did its due diligence,” he said. “I don’t think it could have happened much quicker.”

Baltimore, Anne Arundel County and the rest of the state have seen the gaming industry form in fits and starts, with projects from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland experiencing delays while others have lain fallow for lack of interested developers.

A state commission last week tossed out a proposal for the Baltimore location from a development team that had failed to provide $19.5 million in licensing fees and up-to-date documents in its license application. The license will be rebid by the Video Lottery Facility Location Commission, which said it hopes improving economic conditions and a new site will drive up interest.

On Monday, Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake sent a letter to M.J. “Jay” Brodie, president of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city’s quasi-public development agency, urging him to make sure any new bidding process is straightforward and transparent.

“The Request for Proposals should be completely transparent, so that all bidders will immediately and easily understand which City-owned parcels may be available for development,” said the letter, which was also signed by councilmen Edward Reisinger, William H. Cole IV and Bernard C. “Jack” Young. “It should be noted that zoning for a facility is in place and financing for additional parking facilities has been approved. Every effort should be made to ensure a fair and functional bidding process working in concert with the state commission, including more prompt and greater scrutiny of the capital capacity of the bidders.”

The original casino site requirements laid out by the city a year ago offered about 6 acres of land south of M&T Bank Stadium on Warner Street to be conveyed to the developer to build the gambling facility. City documents also made it clear that potential developers could “submit alternative sites” as long as they met requirements laid out by state law.

But after the city selected Baltimore City Entertainment Group, a development team led by Canadian homebuilder Michael Moldenhauer and former Maryland Democratic Party Chairman Michael Cryor, to build the casino, city officials changed the site offered, substituting a larger, more visible location on Russell Street.

Cordish Cos. President Jonathan Cordish, in an interview this month said, that the city had been misleading in the RFP process for the casino.

“What’s presently being offered, the site and economic deal, bear no resemblance to what we were told to bid on,” he said. “Would MGM have bid on it? Would Harrah’s? Would Sands have bid on it knowing what they now know?”

Brodie, of the BDC, declined to comment for this article.

Daily Record Business Writer Robbie Whelan contributed to this article.