Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Guest column by Tom Arbino
Downtown Cincinnati is vibrant with bustling night clubs and the town piazza, Fountain Square, which is the focal point of family and culture activities. Several new places have opened and the events get better with each passing season, but a disaster in on The casino at Broadway Commons will wreck what we have fought so long to build up. Muggings and purse snatchings will replace Saturday movie night at Fountain Square. Crimes such as check fraud, ATM hold ups, break ins to both homes and autos, and even assaults will skyrocket. The crowds that once came to downtown Cincinnati on a Saturday Night will go elsewhere, handing over the area to the gamblers and crooks. Large Casino cities such as Las Vegas and Atlantic City are Meccas for criminals.
Lawrenceburg, Indiana has seen all of the crimes stated above rise sharply. Lawrenceburg is also a barometer of what is going to happen once the casino corporations get a foothold in Cincinnati.
The Riverboats initially sailed down
the river on fixed
cruise schedules. They then docked,
which is the same
as a building, or so the corporate
logic goes, which
led to bigger casino houses, etc. The same thing will happen in Cincinnati. The casino corporations will use the one casino as a foothold for a second and possibly a third casino. A second casino would transform downtown Cincinnati from an entertainment and family area into a stalking ground for criminals.
***The Ladder Approach Again and Race to the Bottom describe this never ending scheme of continuous expansion of Predatory Gambling venues.
The casino corporations behind our
coming casino
pushed the issue at us for
over twelve years with state
issue after state issue.
Each statewide election, costing millions of dollars each, demonstrated just how much money they are set to profit from this venture. Though we can’t take our vote back, or stop the casino from coming, we can do something to save downtown. We can create a red light district for casinos; say in the West End, which would save much of the character of the downtown that we know and love. Many people have worked countless hours to build downtown up to what it is today. It would be a shame to throw it all away.
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