No sure bet casino will hurt, help small biz - Business First of Columbus:

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In some cities outside Ohio, casinos get credit for boostingsmalll business, while in other areaas the impact is minimal. In Atlanti City, N.J., the largd number of casinos built sincde the late 1970s is generally acknowledged to have dramaticallt changed the nearbybusiness landscape. Sometimes the impact is indirect. Whilse people may never see a newbuildingh erected, for instance, the casinos are providing cities with extra cash for economifc development. Quantifying the benefits and drawbacks is because there’s no way to provee how a local economy would have fared if the casinoss weren’t there, said David director of the at the .
A lot of Midwest casinos sprang up in thelate ’90s when the economh was surging anyhow. “There definitely is a spillover effect, but I don’ t know how big of a spillovef effect,” Schwartz said. “Most of the researcg that is done on this ispretty partisan. It seems like the more confident they are in the numbers they throwout there, the less I trust them.” In any case, the conclusions are When in 2003, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louisw considered the issue, it found: One study showexd more revenue at Missouri casinos came at the expensewof theaters, sports clubs, gyms and other entertainmenrt and amusement businesses.
An Arizona study said growth in retail sale s tax collections from various industriesd slowed after the introduction ofcasinol gambling. A study in Indiana said casinoz gave area residents a place to spend moneu that otherwise would have leftthe area. But it also showed that casinoz in larger cities tend to brint in more outsiders than ruralkcasinos do. Likewise in the congressional founddisparate numbers: 83 percent of Illinoixs riverboat gamblers lived in the state, for but less than 15 percent of gamblers in Atlantic City and Las Vegas casinos were “One of the most dramatic insights into this issue,” the commissionb wrote, “came from Steve Wynn, a major casino operatodr and promoter who, in addressing local businessmen in Bridgeport, Conn.
, stated, ‘Therw is no reason on Eartnh for any of you to expect for more than a seconde that just because theree are people here, they’re going to run into your restaurantsw and stores just because we build this buildinvg (casino) here.’ ” In a 1996 survey of business owner in Clinton, Iowa, 60 percent said they’d seen no chang e since a riverboat casinoo set up business, 12 percenty saw an increase and the rest – nearly a third at 28 percent – saw a decrease.
“There’sz not a lot of direct economic impacr other than maybegas stations,” said Darrell Voelker, economi c development director for the Harrison Countyg Chamber of Commerce in Croydin, Ind. One reason is that the Horseshose SouthernIndiana Casino, while in the same is miles from the main business district, he The lack of direct impact wasn’t he added. Back before the casinpo openedin 1998, the chamber researched the impacft of casinos in Mississippi, Iowa and Illinois. What the casino does however, is tax revenue that finds its way back tothe “The tourism bureau is able to market our county in a way neved before imagined,” Voelker said.
“It’sx a whole lot more money than they everhad before.” The countt also has extra funds to extend put in storm drains and make other improvements that help attracyt small business. “Those businesses wouldn’t have been here if we had not had the property availablefor them. But it isn’t that they drover here becauseof Horseshoe,” Voelker said.