Casinos would threaten performing arts centers

What would happen if 250,000 people stopped coming to downtown Lowell? Who would fill the shops, restaurants and garages? Lowell Memorial Auditorium brings approximately that many people to the downtown, breathing life into our city. The Lowell Memorial Auditorium is "the star of the Merrimack Valley." It is also an anchor to building a thriving economy in downtown Lowell.

This spring, Massachusetts is considering expanding legalized gambling and destination resort casinos that will deal a death blow to the Lowell Memorial Auditorium and other performing arts centers across the state. If Massachusetts opens resort casinos, the auditorium will be adversely affected, and those 250,000 patrons of shops, services and restaurants in downtown Lowell will disappear.

We will lose many headliner performers such as B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, David Copperfield, Bill Cosby and many, many more to the casino performance venues. Casinos exercise a strict exclusivity clause in their contracts. Typically, performers are forbidden to perform within 90 miles for a minimum of 90 days. Performing arts centers like the Lowell Memorial Auditorium cannot compete with the resources, marketing cuts or sweetened deals offered by the gambling industry.

It is not a question of competition. I firmly believe that the arts do not compete with one another, and that a thriving cultural community begets more culture. The casino performance venue simply isn't competition for a location
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like the Memorial Auditorium, it's a 500-pound gorilla that's not playing by the same rules. A resort casino performance venue is a loss leader, a way to get people through the door to gamble. The casino can pay above-market rates for performers and charge less for tickets. In fact, casinos regularly give away free incentives (theater tickets, hotel rooms, free food) in excess of 10 percent of their annual gaming revenue. That can easily amount to $50 million or more in free giveaways. As a local performing arts center, Lowell Memorial Auditorium cannot afford to compete.

It is ironic that the case being made for resort casinos in Massachusetts is based on the economic benefits that they will purportedly correct. How can we expect to believe that a resort casino will bring $1 of economic activity to the surrounding area when the casino business model is built around keeping people from leaving the building? No windows, no clocks, no nothing to remind gamblers that there's anywhere else they want to be apart from the blackjack tables or slot machines. Everything is all under one roof -- a theater featuring headline performers (at ticket prices subsidized by gaming dollars), restaurants, shopping and more.

They will bring in Massachusetts dollars that will then go to out-of-state casino owners. That's all money that won't be used to help our local economy.

In this deep recession, we need to boost our economy. But casino resorts are not the answer. Expanded legal gambling in Massachusetts will hurt downtown Lowell immediately, and for many, many years to come. This recession will end, but if gambling is expanded, casino resorts will be with us forever, and the 250,000 local patrons will be gone.