By Robert Anglen
The Cincinnati Enquirer

FRENCH LICK, Ind. - At the long bar inside the Colonial, frustration is served up and swallowed down faster than a cold can of Coors. Bartender and owner Lynn Wolford tells the town's story with two words and a sweep of the hand: "It's dying."

Wolford, like nearly everyone else you talk to in this once-thriving resort community 150 miles west of Cincinnati, says French Lick's future depends on dipping into its past - when gangsters, gamblers and celebrities dined at the finest hotels, relaxed in the famous springs and played at the all-night casinos.

Town officials have held on to the two main hotels. The springs can easily be uncapped. All that remains is for a new casino to bring it all back to life.

After 15 years of pushing state legislators, French Lick and West Baden Springs might get a chance to open Indiana's 11th gambling boat on a landlocked parcel 50 miles from any river big enough to float a boat.

Wolford describes it as an all-or-nothing bet. He gestures at the cavernous bar, seats empty, pool tables unused, shuffleboard collecting dust.

"Have you looked around?" he said. "Have you driven through town? We've lost."

Outside, the brick-paved downtown streets are eerily quiet in mid-afternoon, with most businesses either closed for the day or closed for good. Yellow ribbons fluttering from street lamps could just as easily symbolize hope for the town as much as for troops fighting overseas.

This is the hometown of Larry Bird, who found professional basketball fame with the Boston Celtics. But even the giant green basketball-shaped sign marking Larry Bird's street seems deflated, standing over an intersection with little traffic. For too long, residents say, the city tried to live off its reputation.

FRENCH LICK and WEST BADEN SPRINGS

• Location: 150 miles west of Cincinnati on Ind. 56 in the Hoosier National Forest • Combined population: about 2,600 • County: Orange • County unemployment: 9.9 percent, highest in the state • First settled: About 1800 by French traders • First hotel: 1830s • Heyday: 1920s, when two grand resort spas hosted high society's elite with gambling, natural springs, golf and fine dining. • Modern claim to fame: Hometown of Boston Celtics star Larry Bird • Casino plan: Hopes to build Indiana's 11th riverboat casino, generating an estimated $50 million a year in revenue.

French traders discovered rich mineral springs in the valley around 1800. Animals were attracted to the waters and soon the valley was being called "the lick." Around the mid 1830s, an enterprising doctor bought land near the springs and began offering the miracle water to people who believed it had special healing power. People would travel hundreds of miles just to get a taste.

But lately, the world seems to have forgotten French Lick.

"It's a damn shame. No, it's worse than that," says Fran Thompson, a whiskey salesman from New Albany whose regular route takes him through French Lick. "I see a town with so much to offer, and there is not a damn thing here."

Thompson can't help but be optimistic about the casino. He has seen what legalized gambling has done for other cities, such as Lawrenceburg, Rising Sun and Vevay. It's hard not to think about what it could do here.

"In Rising Sun, they had a cheese factory serving as city hall," he says, adding that many streets weren't even paved. "Now they've got a public library, the streets are paved and they have money."

Millions, in fact.

Last year, the Grand Victoria Casino generated $33 million in taxes, about $6 million of which went back into Switzerland County for public improvements and new development projects.

No sure thing

But the casino is not a sure thing for French Lick and West Baden Springs.

The state senate has approved the plan, but the bill has to get through the house and then be signed by the governor. While that appears likely to happen, Orange County voters also must give their approval in a referendum.

Most residents think it will pass 2-1. But they can't afford to think otherwise in a county with the highest unemployment rate in the state at 9.9 percent.

"All of Orange County is a disaster area with unemployment," Thompson says. "What this town needs is paying jobs. Two weeks ago, I was at the hotel and they had 43 employees and eight guests. It's hard to stay in business that way."

"The hotel" - how most residents refer to the French Lick Springs Resort & Spa - is the heart of the community. If you have lived in French Lick or West Baden Springs for even a short time, you or one of your friends likely has worked at the 101-year-old spa.

But the seven-story, 471-room retreat has been struggling lately, with much of its business funneled off to Caesars Indiana, the Ohio River gambling boat across from Louisville.

"I guess I'm averaging 20 hours a week now," says hotel bartender Toni Dorsam. "If it wasn't for Social Security, I'd be in big trouble."

Dorsam calls business horrible and reports that the hotel recently had a 5 percent occupancy rate. A new casino would make a huge difference, she says.

Those who have been fighting for the casino the longest say they have been doing it to save the French Lick Springs Resort along with the West Baden Springs Hotel, which is closed.

In their minds, the resorts are more important than the two towns themselves. You might even say the hotels are the towns.

"I wasn't working for the towns. These hotels are the reason," says 71-year-old Geneva Street, owner of Geneva's Hair Clinic in West Baden. "These two hotels are the jewels of our town. We depend on them. If we can get these two hotels going again, that is the only thing that will save us."

Lobbying lawmakers

Since the late 1980s, Street has been organizing pilgrimages to the state house in Indianapolis to campaign for the casino. Whoever has enough gas money that day is the one who drives.

Wearing orange shirts to represent the county, residents have pestered lawmakers to remember their promises to bring a casino to the region, made when gambling was first permitted in the state.

Now, standing in front of the former West Baden Springs Resort - where Al Capone dined in the atrium under the vast glass dome - Street is still wearing an orange shirt emblazoned with the slogan: "We need jobs, we need your help."

"Our industry right now is welfare and Social Security," she says. "We have lost 1,500 jobs in the last two or three years. Most people who do work, work out of the county in Jasper or Bloomington."

West Baden Springs is where she says the revival will start.

Built in 1902, the six-story hotel there, capped by a glass dome, was the place where society's elite came to play. But the fun ended with the 1929 stock market crash, and the property was eventually turned over to the Jesuits for use as a seminary.

By 1980, the hotel was serving as a college; the springs had been capped, the pools drained and filled, the golf courses - where Joe Lewis once swung a nine-iron while he trained for his next fight - forgotten.

While the resort has undergone a $32 million renovation by the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, a buyer has not come forward to open the hotel again. However, just the early talk of opening a casino has renewed interest, says foundation volunteer William Powell.

"The phone's been ringing off the hook," he says. "Everyone was reluctant to buy in, because we haven't been able to bring people in to the city. But now ..."

If the casino is built, it will be located on Ind. 56 between the French Lick and the West Baden Springs resorts, in a field once owned by the hotels that now is fronted by Fast Eddie's Gas Station.

The casino would be the smallest in the state, expected to generate about $50 million a year in revenue.

Although called a riverboat, state law requires the casino only to look like a boat. It would not float, have engines or be required to move. It would be surrounded by a four-foot-deep, man-made lake.

The new hope for French Lick is possible in part because the last of 11 boats allowed by Indiana's original 1993 casino law never got built. The Army Corps of Engineers rejected a plan that would have placed a casino on Patoka Lake, about 5 miles from French Lick.

Former French Lick Councilman Jack Carnes - who retired as a steward from the French Lick Springs Resort and whose dad worked on the West Baden Springs Resort golf course - says tourism is the only thing the region has going for it. Carnes is one of the original orange-shirters and he says the casino will renew reasons to come to the lake in the summer, go skiing in the winter and visit the hot springs.

"It's going to turn the economy around for the whole county," he says.

And if it doesn't happen?

"You'll see a sign at the Orange County line that just says 'closed,'" he shakes his head. "There will be no use coming here. There won't be anything."

E-mail ranglen@enquirer.com