Bill Dusty has a good piece in the Springfield Intruder this week about what a casino would mean for the city’s arts community—including a surprising perspective.
To many people who’d like to see the city reap the economic benefits a thriving arts community could bring, a casino would be a major threat, absorbing disposable income that might otherwise be spent at smaller arts venues and sending it out of town to far-away corporate offices. (Dusty quotes Brian Hale, director of the Bing, describing a casino operating as “a vacuum, sucking revenue out of the community and focusing their spending instead within their facilities.”) That’s the argument made by new Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, who has taken a strong anti-casino position, instead focusing on reviving his city’s downtown through a healthy arts-based economy.
But another long-time booster of Springfield’s arts community, Evan Plotkin, tells Dusty that he, in fact, would welcome a casino to the city, but only if it’s integrated with the rest of downtown, giving local businesses a boost in a way a self-contained “resort” casino would not.
That’s the model that Kevin Kennedy, the city’s chief development officer, touted in an interview with WAMC’s Paul Tuthill earlier this year. Of course, such a development seems unlikely, given the casino industry’s penchant for the enclosed resort-style casino—and the number of struggling communities that seem eager to take one.
