Wednesday, February 23, 2000
Rural county awaiting flood of casino cash
BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FLORENCE, Ind. — Tucked amid rolling farmland where the few remaining cattle still graze the hillsides, residents of Switzerland County await their cash cow.
Its name is riverboat gambling, which opens here in August and has generated millions in tax revenue for neighboring Lawrenceburg and Rising Sun.
Switzerland, 40 miles southwest of Cincinnati, is one of Indiana's poorest counties and has no experience with multimillion-dollar windfalls. That's why a half-dozen financial consulting firms have solicited the county's business.
“We told them, "Don't call us, we'll call you,'” Switzerland County Auditor J.C. Ramsey said Tuesday. “Maybe down the road, yes. But for now, we know the priorities.”
Switzerland, the last of 10 Indiana counties to secure a casino gaming license, won't be shopping for luxuries. As for basic infrastructure — roads, schools, the county jail and courthouse — Switzerland doesn't need experts to tell it what they are.
Those needs have been obvious here for a long time.
Switzerland has seen the future in Lawrenceburg in Dearborn County and Rising Sun in Ohio County: the traffic demands, the crime concerns real and imagined, and the dollar figures.
And Switzerland wants in.
This in a county where a third of the workforce is employed outside the county and what small farms are left continue to struggle. The entire 2000 budget for Switzerland County (pop. 9,000) is $1.7 million. It expects to collect $12 million annually from casino taxes.
The Hollywood Park casino, hotel and recreation complex, named Belterra for the land on which it sits, will open in the shadow of the Markland Locks and Dam.
A 15-story, 300-room hotel, now under construction, looms above the meandering Ohio River like a giant slot machine. The casino and complex are expected to provide 1,400 permanent jobs. The casino riverboat will hold 1,300 slot machines and 55 table games.
“You don't want to be the goose that laid the golden egg and the golden egg came back and ate ya,” Mr. Ramsey said of the county's goal of saving 20 percent of its casino revenue.
Five years ago, Switzerland was the poorest of Indiana's 92 counties. It's still among the poorest.
First-year allocation of casino tax revenue, according to Switzerland County commissioner Jim Allison, will include: $1.7 million for county schools; $1.1 million for infrastructure; and $580,000 for law enforcement.
But once Switzerland gets past its immediate financial needs, financial consultants likely will be called in.
According to Rising Sun Clerk Treasurer Rae Gipson, that decision is inevitable.
“I was there saying, "We don't need an expert.' But, in time, they will,” said Ms. Gipson, a Rising Sun native and council member when the Grand Victoria casino opened there in 1996.
Since January 1997, Rising Sun has collected $10.8 million in casino admissions taxes and $23.5 million in wagering taxes.can attribute to Gipson
The money seems almost Monopoly-like.
“Some still can't believe they want to take old farmland and put a big hotel on it,” said Jack Kidwell, a 66-year-old retiree who owns four acres of riverfront land in Florence near the casino site. “It'll be very good for us.”
How good? Rising Sun's economy continues to grow, and last month, Argosy casino officials presented Lawrenceburg with a development-agreement check for $16.1 million, bringing that three-year total to $76 million. That's in addition to the tax revenue.
“I would tell Switzerland,” Lawrenceburg Mayor Paul Tremain said, “the downside is the traffic and we just deal with it. But the upside is, there's no way the people of Lawrenceburg would be able to pay for these improvements without the riverboat casino.”
Argosy generated $6.8 million in wagering and admission taxes in January alone, according to figures released Monday by the Indiana Gaming Commission. Since it opened in December 1996, the Argosy complex has generated $127.7 million for the state, $54.5 million for Lawrenceburg and $17.9 million for Dearborn County.
Lawrenceburg's shopping list from Argosy's January development-agreement check — including a new swimming pool, playground equipment and downtown redevelopment plans — reflects luxuries not in Switzerland's immediate plans.
At the casino groundbreaking last summer, Mr. Allison pledged to widen and blacktop every road in the county within 10 years. Their names recall rural roots: Goose Creek Road, McCreay Ridge Road, Lost Fork Road.
In the next five years, the casino is expected to generate gaming taxes of at least $60 million for Switzerland.
“It's just amazing,” said Mr. Allison, a retired elementary school principal who's lived in Switzerland for a quarter-century, making him a relative newcomer. “We're still a poor county until that money starts coming.”
The Hollywood Park casino's home is Florence (pop. 100), a dot on the map until now. In the Rand McNally Road Atlas, the entire stretch of Switzerland along the Ohio River is designated “scenic.”
Florence was selected, oddly, because it's just upriver from the Markland Dam. The flow backup creates water on Florence's shore not under the jurisdiction of Kentucky.
Now, millions of people a year are projected to pour into little ol' Florence, for the casino, hotel, tennis courts, spa and meeting or entertainment hall. An 18-hole championship golf course will open in spring 2001.
Championship-caliber golf in Switzerland. Lot of locals get a kick out of that concept.
Vevay, seven miles downstream, is the county seat and closest tourist spot to the casino. It is braced for change.
“But the whole world's changing. It's not just Vevay,” Vevay Town Council President Earl Van Winkle said, resting his elbows on his desk at Town Hall. “It's time to move on and take advantage.”
Vevay's 2000 budget is $360,000. It anticipates $850,000 in annual casino revenue, a staggering amount for this river town.
But because Florence has quick access to I-71 near Carrollton, Ky., and no non-casino attractions, most gamblers aren't expected to stick around.
Plans now include a YMCA, which the county has never had, for Vevay's west side, next to a new medical clinic.
Currently, the closest clinic is in Madison, Jefferson County.
Meanwhile, the road department's grader, replaced last year when Hollywood Park gave the county $750,000 in advance funding, was a 1966 model. Several county trucks had more than 300,000 miles on them. Casino tax revenue could finance an entire new fleet.
The money will be heaven, opponents warn, but the gambling would be hell.
Habitual gambling, and its effect on families, are too high a price, they warn. The Indiana Gambling Impact Study Commission, however, released a report in December that indicated no significant increases in crime, gambling addiction or other social ills have affected Lawrenceburg and Rising Sun.
The commission cautioned that it might be too soon for those problems to emerge.
That's the part Pete Furnish emphasizes. Mr. Furnish, a lifelong county resident at 63, was on council in Vevay for 10 years. He warns about potential for corruption, bankruptcy and the breakup of families.
“You look at Rising Sun, you look at Lawrenceburg, there's a lot of money there but it takes years for some of the negative things to surface,” he said. “I'm not backing off.” Though he's resigned to the casino's presence, he said a vigilant watchdog is Switzerland's best defense.
The county always has relied on agriculture, going back to Heathcoat Picket, who settled the land here in 1795.
Tobacco, once the county's most lucrative crop, has largely been abandoned by farmers troubled by increasing federal regulations.
Soybean and corn grow in patches, but the sloping farmland belongs to the few cattle that still remain. There is only one dairy farm remaining in Switzerland, and only a few beef-cattle farms.
Non-farming jobs have been disappearing too, though overall, Switzerland's unemployment rate of 3.4 percent is below the national average. But while the workers are in Switzerland, the work increasingly is not. Many cross the Markland Bridge to manufacturing and steel industry jobs in Kentucky.
And yet, because of the casino and the county's proximity to jobs elsewhere, Switzerland's population is expected to reach 11,012 by 2020, according to a study released last year by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
The county jail was built in 1853 and does not meet state regulations. Prisoners can be held there for only 72 hours, after which they must be released or transferred to other jails.
County officials want a new jail, and the county courthouse, built in 1867, is also outdated.
But infrastructure changes aside, many here want to maintain the rural life. “I don't want to live by the mall. I love the rural setting,” said Kristi Harms, 35, a mother of two who moved to a 20-acre East Enterprise farm two years ago.
Red-and-white “IU” banners wave from front porches, but the new colors are green and gold.
Consider the following passage:
“As we begin these pages the autumn ... is upon us, softly tinting in harmonious hues of green and gold the whole drowsy landscape of woodland, hillsides and stream. From every quarter come the humming, whirring sounds of industry.”
Those words are the first sentence of History of Switzerland County, a book tucked in the corner of the county public library in Vevay.
It was published in 1885, and the whirring sounds to which the historians referred were farm equipment.
Green was pasture land, gold the rewards for hard labor.
Now, green is pleasure land, gold the rewards for its location along the river.
Switzerland has seen the future. It wants in.
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