Sugarhouse Casino

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board has unanimously approved table games for the SugarHouse Casino, set to open in September on Delaware Avenue in Fishtown. The seven-man board gave SugarHouse the green light on Tuesday to add 40 games, including blackjack, craps, roulette, baccarat, and three types of poker. It also will have 1,602 slot machines. - Jennifer Lin

The Web site for SugarHouse Casino has a video feed from its 22-acre site on North Delaware Avenue, showing crews removing rubble and driving piles. The scene looks busy. But, the project's investors complain, they are no closer to breaking ground for a foundation than they were exactly a year ago, when the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board issued the casino's license. As of today, the partners have missed a state deadline to have 1,500 slot machines up and running. They are asking the board for a one-year extension, with no guarantee they will get one over mounting objections.

AS A Philadelphian, I strongly urge that we do whatever we can to make SugarHouse Casino a reality. We need jobs. SugarHouse will hire 1,100 permanent employees. We need wage tax relief. Revenues from the casino will lower our wage tax. The schools need funding. SugarHouse will help there, too. I look forward to a world-class entertainment facility giving the public plenty of access to the riverfront. We deserve the world-class facility, the jobs it will create, the hundreds of millions of dollars it will pump into the city budget, and the positive impact that it will have on the development and revitalization of North Delaware Avenue and the waterfront.

A consultant to a proposed casino in Fishtown quit after he was told he would lose his contract unless he resigned from Larry Farnese's state Senate campaign or convinced Farnese to support the casino. Ken Snyder, a communications consultant, went to work last month for Farnese, who is seeking to replace retiring state Sen. Vince Fumo. Snyder has worked as a consultant for Fumo since 2000. Snyder told the Daily News that Dick Sprague, an investor in the proposed SugarHouse casino, issued the ultimatum 2 1/2 weeks ago: Snyder would lose his SugarHouse contract unless he quit Farnese's campaign or convinced Farnese to publicly support the casino project.

Police are searching for two masked men who robbed three women at gunpoint in the parking lot of the SugarHouse Casino early Friday and pistol-whipped one woman before fleeing with cash and credit cards. Police say the stickup was the first robbery on SugarHouse's grounds since the casino opened in September. It was the second such crime linked to the casino, however. Last month, a man who had won about $2,000 was followed home to New Jersey by two men who later tried to rob him. Surveillance cameras outside the casino on the Delaware River waterfront captured the Friday-morning robbery, said Anthony DiLacqua, head of security for SugarHouse.

If SugarHouse Casino breaks ground on a planned expansion this November, what will the next phase of the gaming hall look like? That question is at the heart of a dispute between local minority investors and the Chicago billionaire developer who runs the casino, Neil Bluhm. In a lawsuit filed Friday in Delaware Chancery Court, local investors argue that they are being marginalized in decision-making for the casino's future. Their partnership is led by Philadelphia lawyer Richard A. Sprague and auto magnate Robert Potamkin.

DEIDRE JONES may not be in the same league as legendary gamblers Arnold Rothstein and Nick "The Greek" Dandolos, but the Delaware County woman did carve out a little piece of gaming history yesterday afternoon as she appeared to be the first person ever legally dealt a hand of blackjack in Philadelphia. Jones, who bet a black, pink and lime-green $100 chip at a $25-minimum table, was one of the hundreds of people who jammed the SugarHouse Casino on the Delaware River almost five years after plans to build it were first announced.

Fishtown residents who worried about what the SugarHouse Casino would bring to their neighborhood are now being confronted with neon signs that advertise a "cash for gold" business, which they say targets casino-goers desperate for gambling money. Residents are encouraged by last week's cease-operations order that forces the business to remove the signs posted on the storefront on Delaware Avenue near Allen Street. But they fear it may not be enough to stop the business from opening.

Seven state lawmakers whose legislative districts abut the Delaware River in Philadelphia yesterday asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to halt all construction of the proposed SugarHouse Casino, contending its license to build on submerged land beyond the river's edge is illegal. The lawsuit, which names the city as defendant, attacks the Nov. 27, 2007, decision by the city Commerce Department granting riparian rights for underwater development to the casino builder, HSP Gaming, a limited partnership that is incorporated in Delaware.

IN THE REGION Pa. casino revenue declines April gambling receipts from table games at Pennsylvania casinos fell 9 percent, according to state figures, just a month after hitting a record high as competition grows in bordering states Ohio and Maryland. Gross revenue from the 11 casinos in April was $56.5 million, down from March receipts of $61.9 million, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said. It beat April 2011 receipts by 7 percent, but per-table revenue fell 10 percent from the year-ago period.

TWENTY floors above Broad and Spring Garden streets, local developer Bart Blatstein stood on the windy rooftop of the former State Office Building that he owns, gazed southward at the Inquirer/Daily News building, which he also owns, and laid out his plans for a casino/entertainment complex there. The clock-tower building would become a hotel, he said Thursday. The casino would occupy the block of Callowhill Street between 15th and 16th, with a commanding view of Center City, and would be connected to parking on both sides by bridges, he said.

An African American employee who claims that his race and pro-union leanings cost him his job at the SugarHouse Casino has hand-delivered a petition to get it back. Cory Ballard, 25, who made $13 an hour plus tips as a player services agent the last nine months, was accompanied by about a dozen SugarHouse employees and Bishop Dwayne Royster of the Living Water United Church of Christ in Kensington as he delivered the petition. It was signed by two-thirds of his old department and given to casino representatives Tuesday at management's office at 1080 N. Delaware Ave., directly across from the casino.

After Mat Tomezsko moved from Mantua to Fishtown last summer, he couldn't stop thinking about his neon neighbor, SugarHouse Casino. "I was struck by how alluring it would be for someone who lived here to believe in the promise. " The casino's seductive advertising insists "pure fun" awaits all who enter the gilded waterfront cage. "Philly loves a winner," we know from SugarHouse billboards, which suggest that only giddy hotties prowl this groovy gaming floor. The more he obsessed about how a working-class urban community makes peace with a 24/7 casino on the corner, the more Tomezsko - a 2009 graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art - thought he had grist for his next exhibition.

Asked to revise a little-noticed statute that the Montgomery County commissioners say robs them of their share of state gaming money, lawmakers in Harrisburg have so far overwhelmingly offered one response: Don't bet on it. "As of now, there really is not much we can do," wrote State Rep. Robert W. Godshall (R., Montgomery) in a recent letter to county officials. His response came days after the commissioners sent their own missive to the county's 23-member delegation in Harrisburg, pleading for help to change the law they blame for cutting the county out of proceeds other counties receive for hosting casinos within their borders.

It would be better news if state officials had announced a commitment to stop relying on gambling to fund Pennsylvania's needs. But at least Philadelphia residents can gain some satisfaction from state Treasurer Rob McCord's assessment that this town should not host the next big casino. After surveying the most lucrative sites for yet another casino, McCord concluded that Philadelphia probably would not raise the most money for the state treasury. Both the York and Reading areas would bring in more revenue, McCord reported in a ranking of 11 potential casino sites.

Even though the Philadelphia region will open its fourth casino in Valley Forge, a state-commissioned study says there is room for one more gaming place for either City Avenue or West Philadelphia. That is, if the second license intended for Philadelphia stays within city limits. The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board revoked a planned second city casino license over repeated delays by the Foxwoods investor group. The license was pulled in December when Foxwoods made no progress on a casino planned for South Philadelphia.

A COUPLE took a gamble Monday night at SugarHouse Casino in Fishtown by leaving their three grandchildren in the car while they went inside to play, according to police. Despite the odds, the pair came out even after the District Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute because there were no signs of abuse or neglect, said Tasha Jamerson, D.A. spokeswoman. Casino security spotted the children, ages 12, 7 and 2, alone in the car in the casino's parking lot about 7:55 p.m., police said.

Next summer, SugarHouse Casino wants to break ground on an expansion to almost double its gambling space and add a restaurant, meeting rooms, and a seven-story parking structure, an architect for the project told the Philadelphia City Planning Commission on Tuesday. The casino also plans to link its site to Penn Treaty Park by extending a waterfront trail, said Ian Cope, a managing partner with Cope Linder Architects. In a presentation Tuesday to commissioners, Cope said the revised plan calls for a lower and longer parking garage than was envisioned in 2009.