Three Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos reopened in mid-December amid tent cities, but many Coastal residents say the state Legislature and national media don’t realize how much work remains to be done in the area.
The three casinos have made more than $14 million in just 10 days, bringing much needed revenue into area and state governments, according to The Associated Press. The three establishments-the Isle of Capri, Imperial Palace and New Palace casinos-opened before the end of the year and employ about 3,000 people from the region.
Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, said in December that he thinks casino executives who plan to keep their establishments on the Coast show a vested interest in its future.
“It was positive, what their future plans were, that the Coast would be back on its feet within the next 18 months,” Gregory said.
Five months after the fact, however, tent cities and debris-littered streets remain a common sight along Katrina-battered towns like Biloxi and Pass Christian.
State lawmakers garnered much criticism from what many in the media have called simply a “lack of progress.”
National news media reported in late December that residents in Biloxi and Gulfport were still living in tents four months after the disaster.
Senior architecture major Anthony Garcia, a D’Iberville resident, said he believes people don’t realize how much has to be done.
In fact, construction deadlines given from the beginning of the recovery indicated when the rebuilding would actually start.
“They’re not going to allow anything to start up residential-wise until February and that’s when they hope to finish all these new regulations, new building codes,” Garcia said.
Many Gulf Coast residents are also concerned that the national and local news media are constantly fixated on New Orleans, leaving Coastal communities in a cloud of obscurity.
“I don’t want to sound like I hate New Orleans or anything like that, but I’m tired of ‘New Orleans this’ and ‘New Orleans that,'” said Garcia. “Everywhere you see something about the hurricane, it’s Katrina, New Orleans, and in small print, the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”
Christmas break felt like entering a different world than the one he remembered before.
“You go to Pass Christian or Bay St. Louis, and it looks like a bomb was dropped,” he said. “But when you’re there, and you know what was there [before], it’s unbelievable.”
According to the state Gaming Commission’s Web site, recent earnings for Mississippi casinos show the damaging effect that Katrina brought to the Gulf Coast. Third-quarter earnings indicate that 7.7 million people visited state casinos, a 47 percent decrease from the state’s second quarter earnings.
That decrease reflects a problem that Gov. Haley Barbour and the Mississippi legislature cannot ignore, said Marty Wiseman, director of Mississippi State University’s Stennis Institute of Government.
“The casinos contributed over $200 million to the general fund, plus city and county funds in the cities they’re located. If you look at it purely from an investment standpoint, these companies have the dollars to come in and put this big infrastructure in place,” Wiseman said.
He added that putting people back to work through rebuilding everything from road systems to residential housing will cause Mississippi’s economy to bounce back.
“You’re going to have huge on-land buildings that, because of the 800-foot allowance, will now be able to build back bigger and much more substantial than before,” Wiseman said. “The Gulf Coast will become a huge economic engine for the state.”
Currently, only three casinos are already open and receiving visitors. Six other Coastal casinos will be open within 18 months, they’ve said.
Representatives from 10 of the affected casinos met in December to discuss rebuilding efforts.
Treasure Bay plans to build a two-story, 70,000-square foot structure on the south section of its existing hotel. Renovations are expected to begin in February or March and take about six months.
Boomtown, Silver Slipper and Casino Magic Bay St. Louis all said they would reopen in mid to late 2006. MGM Mirage, Inc., which plans to keep the Biloxi-based Beau Rivage on water, announced that it would reopen Aug. 29, 2006-the one-year anniversary of Katrina.
A Hard Rock spokesman at the meeting said that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s immediate future remains clouded by legal issues.
“The spokesman said there were financial issues involved, but he told the Commission those matters should be resolved in the near future,” Gregory said. “Everything is in order for them to rebuild.”
Neither Harrah’s nor Pinnacle Entertainment’s executives attended the meeting; as a result, the Commission did not get to hear about the fate of the Grand Casino Gulfport, Grand Casino Biloxi or its neighbor, Casino Magic Biloxi. Harrah’s, which owns the Grand Casinos, has pledged to rebuild in Biloxi, but has not committed to rebuilding its Gulfport resort.
Garcia said he feels the state has made progress through this tragedy because the people have come together in a time when it mattered most.
“It’s amazing what something like this will do. It makes everybody really friendly to everybody else,” he said.