Children in Mass. could learn from casino next door

Children in Mass. could learn from casino next door

Bob Kerr
 

So what’s the story on this Fall River casino? Are there going to be field trips from the elementary school next door? Will third graders get the opportunity to chat up blackjack dealers and croupiers?

“So when you, uh, drop that little ball onto that spinning wheel and make it jump all over the place, can you make it stop where you want?”

Will the walk home at the end of the school day include the need to navigate around grizzled, tapped-out gamblers cradling pints of white port and drooling out words of dreams gone sour?

It’s so hard to know. Fall River officials have teamed up with Foxwoods, that bingo hall in the Connecticut woods that exploded into a casino, to build one of the Massachusetts casinos just off Route 24 near the Tiverton line. They want Fall River to be part of that great sucking sound made when gamblers desert Twin River and Newport Grand for more alluring venues on the other side of the state line.

In the interstate duel for suckers, Fall River and Fox-woods want to stand together as a place where people can discover the excitement of gambling or simply drop off a paycheck.

With a slots parlor already approved in nearby Plainville, a Fall River casino could mean a one-two Bay State punch that will leave Rhode Island’s casino and semi-casino looking like run-down shopping malls in an old mill town.

Like Harbor Mall, for example. That’s the fading retail dinosaur that occupies most of the site picked for the Fall River casino. It is one of those malls that time passed by a few decades back. It is a sad place, a place without a future unless someone comes up with a plan so zany and off-the-wall that urban blight won’t really matter.

Like a casino, for example. A person can walk in the door of a casino and disappear into the timeless hustle. Once inside, the casino could be in the south of France or the south end of Fall River. It doesn’t matter. Things don’t spill over. Gamblers are not going to go to the nearby Taco Bell. Their experience is self contained.

Of course, Fall River is a long way from becoming a casino site. Other places are in the race for the Massachusetts licenses. The big casino companies have been trolling hard-luck towns in search of desperation. And Fox-woods hooked Fall River. It’s only the beginning.

And people in all parts of the city are asking: “You want to put a casino where?”

It is one very strange location, with a strip mall here and a strip mall there. They’ll have to bring in the glamour by the truckload.

The directions to the casino will be like so many Fall River directions: Go to where Harbor Mall used to be and take a left.

And there is the elementary school. It really is right next door to the proposed casino site. It is probably a first in the feverish, frenzied grab for casino salvation. There is the possibility of kids heading into school in the morning while bleary-eyed gamblers stumble out of the casino and ask where they are.

It is just one of the possibilities that comes with a casino. There are also, of course, the ruined lives and dried-up local businesses.

Fall River residents have to vote on it. It’s a bad deal. 


  

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