Baltimore, Maryland: an unlikely gambling mecca on the rise

Post-industrial towns are casino gambling’s newest frontier. Located mainly in the Midwest and Northeast, they were off limits to Vegas-style gambling until their states began embracing casinos as a source of tax revenue and jobs.

Maryland, which didn’t open its first slots parlor until 2010, is now one of the fastest-growing casino markets in the country - and one with an increasingly urban focus. The largest of its four casinos, Maryland Live, is located just 12 miles south of downtown Baltimore. On Tuesday, a fifth, the US$ 442 million Horseshoe casino, is scheduled to open in the Inner Harbor amid expectations that it will turn gambling in the Free State into a billion-dollar-a-year industry. And at the other end of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, MGM Resorts International has begun work on a US$ 950 million gambling complex at National Harbor that is expected to open in 2016.

A decade ago, no one would have imagined that Maryland would become a gambling mecca, siphoning bettors away from neighboring states and Atlantic City, where four casinos will be shuttered by the end of the summer.

For years, much of the opposition to casino gambling centered on its potentially harmful effects on Baltimore, a city of 622,000, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. “We don’t need to put 4,500 slot machines in the middle of a community trying to right itself,” Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch once argued, before the lure of millions in gambling revenue and thousands of new casino jobs drained away the state’s resistance.

Now, Horseshoe is bringing slot machines, blackjack, craps and poker within a few miles of thousands of low-income residents, most of whom can’t afford to gamble but may do so anyway. Gambling addiction experts contend that proximity matters. A 2004 national study found that living within 10 miles of a casino is associated with a 90 percent increase in the odds that a person will become a problem gambler.

The casino has generated 2,000 construction jobs and 1,700 permanent paychecks for dealers, bartenders, cashiers, security guards and janitors in a city where the unemployment rate is almost 10 percent. And the mayor already has plans for millions in gambling revenue, promising to reduce property taxes and pump money into school buildings and recreation centers.

It will be a while before the social costs and economic benefits are clear. But one thing is certain, said Senator Paul Pinsky: “The bottom line is the house always wins.”