Anne Arundel County has been mired for months in a zoning battle over what would be the state's largest and most lucrative slots parlor, and now the head of the county council wants the entire project moved from Arundel Mills Mall to an industrial area miles away.
Chairwoman Cathleen M. Vitale said she will introduce a plan at the council's meeting tonight that would permit a slots parlor south of Route 32, far from residential neighbors of the mall who have promised a protracted battle with the developer.
Meanwhile, a pro-slots council member who said he is exasperated by more than six months of inaction has his own plans to revive the original zoning changes for slots at Arundel Mills, where Baltimore-based developer Cordish Cos. wants to build a 4,750-machine facility on a parking lot. The measure could be reintroduced as soon as today.
With the slots commission on the verge of issuing its second of five available licenses later this week, to Penn National for a 1,500-machine facility in Cecil County, some Arundel elected officials are worried that their site may be left behind.
The Cordish bid, submitted to the state in February, has been stalled by a seven-member council that is divided about having a casino next to a mall. Two members support the Cordish project, two oppose it and the other three, including Republican Vitale and Daryl Jones, a Democrat whose district includes the mall, have said publicly that they are undecided.
County Executive John R. Leopold, a Republican who opposes slots but says he won't interfere with voters' desire for them, pushed the zoning legislation in March, only to withdraw it this summer when the council failed to act. He has since been silent on the slots debate. "At this point, it's in the councils' hands," Leopold's spokesman, Dave Abrams, said.
Several council members have said they won't vote on a zoning change before the state issues a slots license - a scenario the slots commission wants to avoid.
Donald C. Fry, chairman of the slots commission, has said at the past several commission hearings that he wants the county council to act first.
He said the state law enabling slot machines in five counties, approved by voters last fall, makes it clear that facilities should be licensed only if local zoning is in place. In addition, he said, the commission needs to know what sort of rules the county will place on the casino operator - crime mitigation and new roads, for example - before deciding whether issuing a license is in the state's best interest. He said the process doesn't work correctly if done in reverse.
