An expanded and relocated Baltimore casino on bustling Russell Street is expected to significantly boost the project's profits, and inject new momentum into the state's slots program, which to date has fallen below expectations.
Baltimore's developers are vowing to build the state's first slot-machine parlor, which will be several times larger than their original proposal and which, according to gambling industry analysts, likely will draw a wider clientele with an improved downtown location.
The new plan now places the casino on land that previously was slated for a sports complex, surprising developers who said they didn't know the parcel was available for a casino. And it also poses more competition to a casino that developer Cordish Cos. wants to build in Anne Arundel County, the largest and most ambitious of the four slots parlors proposed in the state, but one that is currently mired in zoning issues.
Jon Cordish, a vice president with the company, said that if bidders had understood that the city would make the Russell Street location available, the city site would have piqued more interest. Cordish said it would have affected his appraisal of the site as a slots location.
The Baltimore development group is racing to be the first to open in the state after voters approved slot machine gambling in November. That will give the city casino a crack at building loyalty among customers, analysts say.
"There is always an advantage in business to opening first," Cordish said in an e-mail. He declined to further discuss the revised Baltimore plans.
A legislative analysis shows considerable overlap between possible clientele for the casinos in Baltimore and Anne Arundel, assuming that residents would drive up to 50 miles to play the slots and considering the two sites are only about 10 miles apart.
But industry analysts said the area could easily support both. They said that casinos in Baltimore would largely draw residents of the city and its suburbs and Anne Arundel would attract residents from the Washington suburbs and further south.
"We are both competitors and comrades because the state needs us both to be successful," said Michael Cryor, a spokesman for the Baltimore City Entertainment Group that's planning the slots parlor.
