Don't Mess with Success

By Edward P. Madaus and Troy R. Siebels, TELEGRAM AND GAZETTE


The city of Worcester celebrates the two-year anniversary of The Hanover Theatre this month. During these two years, it has often been described as the catalyst for the rebirth of downtown Worcester. Over 300,000 patrons have breathed new life into the city, its streets, restaurants, hotels and other businesses while visiting the theatre. With this success, The Hanover Theatre is a good bet for the continued revitalization of Worcester.

Today, The Hanover Theatre, and other wonderful venues like it, face a critical threat from resort casinos. The performance venues that are an integral part of the casinos will almost certainly deal a fatal blow to The Hanover Theatre if they are placed anywhere in Massachusetts, save possibly the far western edge of the state.

What’s the threat? First, because of radius restrictions, we will lose to casinos our top headline performers — such as B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, David Copperfield, Bill Cosby, Miranda Lambert, Ian Anderson, Mandy Patinkin and many, many more. We already have evidence of this, as we have been prevented by Connecticut casinos from booking Jerry Seinfeld, Jackson Browne, Denis Leary and other popular icons.

Next to go will be Broadway shows. Over the past several months, Worcester billboards for Foxwoods have advertised Hairspray and Cirque Dreams — two shows that have played at The Hanover Theatre. If a casino in Massachusetts were to book Broadway shows such as these, radius restrictions will prevent those shows from appearing at The Hanover Theatre.

Skeptics may think that this is about competition. Let us assure you, we firmly believe that the arts don’t compete with each other; rather a thriving cultural community begets more culture.

A casino performance venue isn’t simply competition to a nonprofit performing arts center like The Hanover Theatre — it’s an 800-pound gorilla. And this gorilla doesn’t play by the same rules. A resort casino’s performance venue is considered a loss leader, a way to get people through the door to gamble. Resort casinos can pay above-market rates for performers, and charge less for tickets. They regularly give away free incentives, including theatre tickets, hotel rooms and meals in excess of 10 percent of their annual gaming revenue. That can easily amount to $50 million a year or more in free tickets, room and food. The casino isn’t selling tickets in order to pay for the show, it’s giving away free tickets so that people will come and gamble.

It is ironic that the case being made for resort casinos in Massachusetts is based on the economic benefit they will purportedly create, when so much evidence points to exactly the opposite effect. The casino’s business model is built around keeping people from leaving the building. No windows, no clocks, nothing to remind gamblers that there’s anywhere they might want to be other than at the blackjack table or slot machine. How can we possibly believe that this model will bring one dollar to the economic activity of the surrounding area? “Resort” casinos are designed to be just that — everything under one roof, including restaurants, shopping and a theatre featuring headline performers to bring people in, subsidized by gambling dollars.

The casinos will bring in dollars — Massachusetts dollars — which will then go to out-of-state casino owners, not to Massachusetts restaurants, hotels and theatres.

The casinos will create jobs, but they will be the same jobs lost when the local performing arts centers, stores and restaurants close their doors. Those jobs will not be the only cost to Massachusetts. The 300,000 people who have visited The Hanover Theatre in the past two years have dined at nearby restaurants, parked in city garages, shopped nearby. When those 300,000 people visit the theatre in a resort casino, they’ll spend those ancillary dollars at the casino’s restaurants, stores and slot machines. And those dollars will leave Massachusetts.

We urge you not to be distracted by all of the noise about casino gambling in Massachusetts and do your own research. Look at New London, Conn., where more than 30 restaurants closed following the opening of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. Look at Cripple Creek, Colo., whose once-thriving downtown went from 66 restaurants to less than 10. Look at performing arts centers in other cities where the impact from nearby resort casinos has been devastating. It took us less than an hour on the phone with managers of theatres in Reading, Pa., Fresno, Calif., and Ames, Iowa, to be convinced.

It is critical that we keep what is benefiting Massachusetts, rather than gamble it away. The imminent debate on this issue on Beacon Hill needs to be influenced by people who care about the economic impact resort casinos can have on our commonwealth. Contact your legislators today and let them know that the theatre and its impact on Worcester are important to you. Don’t let them throw away their investment in The Hanover Theatre — and yours — on a bad bet.

Edward P. Madaus is founder, and Troy R. Siebels is executive director, of The Hanover Theatre.