A Gateway Or Obstacle To Reviving Baltimore?
Southwestern Site Divides Officials

By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 24, 2008

This report is the last in a series on the five potential locations for slot machine gambling in Maryland.

The southwestern gateway into Baltimore is hardly an appealing one.

Route 295 dumps motorists onto Russell Street, where boarded-up windows and low-slung industrial buildings present themselves left and right. Beer cans and crushed glass litter the curbs. The impression is jarring and misleading, arriving as it does ahead of the city's signature stadiums, Inner Harbor and new office buildings.

City leaders say they have a way to help bring the area more in line with the civic jewels beyond it: slot machines.

"It's ripe with potential," Demaune Millard, chief of staff for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said of how a possible gambling parlor could induce more investment in the area.

The question is what kind of investment.

Slots boosters say that just drawing people into the area would enliven it. A well-run gambling operation could usher in restaurants and hotels and attract Inner Harbor tourists a shuttle bus ride away.

Others fear construction of quick-loan operations and pawnshops.

"Slot machines are like a lottery on crack. They're far more addicting," said Del. Curtis S. Anderson (D-Baltimore).

This kind of debate is taking place across the state. In November, voters will be asked whether to authorize up to 15,000 slot machines in Allegany, Anne Arundel, Cecil and Worcester counties and Baltimore. Perhaps no venue is quirkier than Baltimore, which prides itself on the adjective.

Charm City would get up to 3,750 machines, second only to Anne Arundel. Two big questions for Baltimore:

Would the Arundel site and one north of Baltimore in Cecil siphon out-of-towners? How would Baltimore's slots parlor affect another proposed project in the area, which calls for recreation fields and a children's learning center?

Baltimore leaders say the right kind of slots operator can work in the area and can bring tens of millions of badly needed dollars to city coffers. They support development of the family-friendly project and the slots venue, saying they are not incompatible.

In the past, Baltimore leaders were not enamored of slots. Dixon opposed placing them at two locations often mentioned: the Inner Harbor and Pimlico racetrack.

And just east of Russell Street, the city was pushing the kid-friendly redevelopment plan.

Called "Gateway South," the 11-acre, $200 million project is still very much a possibility, backers say. Ray Lewis, the Ravens' star linebacker, as part of the project, would open the Ray of Hope Center, described in a city news release last year as a "new educational and mentoring center that will help motivate and teach children city wide."

With Gateway South's office space, stores and businesses, developers envision parents dropping their children off at soccer or football practice and, instead of standing near their minivans in a nameless suburban recreation park, sauntering down the street for a latte at a Starbucks.

What a difference a $1.7 billion structural deficit in the state budget makes. Facing that prospect last year, Maryland politicians seized on the revenue possibility of slots and put the referendum on the November ballot.

Baltimore wanted in on the action. As the mayor wrote to residents in her Nov. 2, 2007, Dixon Report: "The difficult fiscal realities facing our city and state, combined with the decision to put the issue of slot machine gaming before the voters in November, 2008, have given me reason to broaden my thinking about the role of slot machines."

Rules for Baltimore were established: The parlor couldn't be within a quarter-mile of a residential neighborhood, would have to be constructed on city-owned land and had to be within a half-mile of Route 295 and Interstate 95.

Anderson, the Baltimore delegate, said the location was so site-specific that he figured it was tailored for the Gateway South developers. "Clearly, the skeptic in me was saying, 'They've got someone in mind,' " Anderson said in an interview last week.

The delegate fears that slots in Baltimore would send the wrong message to young people, endorsing a quick path to riches vs. one built on education and hard work. And he worries about such ancillary problems as sophisticated prostitution rings.

"Our local prostitutes are basically trash," Anderson said. "This is going to be a new league."

Still, Anderson said that if the city were to have slots, the Russell Street area south of the M&T Bank Stadium has its appeal. Operations at a Greyhound bus terminal nearby could be moved, with the site converted to the kind of depot that slots parlor operators covet for hauling in groups.

Even better is the access to Route 295 and I-95, which makes the site more accessible than Pimlico in northwestern Baltimore.

The city considers slots first and foremost as a revenue operation. Baltimore would make money from a "partnership agreement" with the slots licensee, Millard said.

Millard said no one has selected slots developers, and the parameters of a parlor's location, albeit limited, include land outside Gateway South.

Samuel Polakoff, who as a managing director of Cormony Development is a lead builder of Gateway South, walked a reporter through the drab area last week, saying Gateway South can flourish regardless of slots.

"This corner sort of becomes the gateway," Polakoff said, looking at the northeast parcel of Russell and Bayard streets.

A chain-link fence surrounds an industrial building that Polakoff estimates is 100 years old. Nearby, two stacked plastic milk crates serve as a bench for a man who washes the windshields of idling cars.

Polakoff said Lewis's "Team 52" development logo would grace a new building on the corner. "To say we're going to redefine this gateway and corridor would be an understatement," he added.

The Ravens stadium looms in the background, adding to the project's sports-urban motif. Polakoff walked east to a lot that was the scene of a recent fire and now holds piles of rubbish. "A great way to introduce people to the city," he joked.

Polakoff walked through a desolate patch of trees, arriving at a lightly used bicycle path linked to a 14-mile route through the city. His project would take over maintenance of the parkland. Then he got to a waterfront with a funky but not disagreeable view of the elevated ramps of I-95 in the distance. The developer said he does not have retail and business tenants lined up. "Obviously, the economy is not necessarily helping us in our progression," he said.

But that hardly means he considers slots an answer for his project. Polakoff said he was not involved in slot discussions with the city, and the final decision about a location came as a surprise.

The developer said it is his impression that a slots parlor would be placed outside his project.

Done correctly, he said, a nearby slots operation could possibly help his project. But poorly thought-out traffic patterns or choosing the wrong slots operation could affect how his project advanced.

"Part of the question," Polakoff said of a possible slots parlor, "is: If it's super close, have we designed a project that will attract the same patrons?"