by GERALD NEILY
You thought the slots debate was finally over? It appeared to end with the bang of voters’ approval in November, but now it keeps going with a whimper centered in the heart of suburbia – Arundel Mills Mall.
By constitutional law, 15,000 machines are allowed, but only 1,800 appear likely to get installed – only 12 percent of the total.
Two applicants didn’t even pay the required fees, as the Sun reported today.
One of them, David Cordish, wants to put the slots at Arundel Mills Mall, a highly-exposed, high-traffic location. A slots operation in such a spot would be vulnerable to all the criticisms slots opponents have hurled and would face seemingly insurmountable political odds. Cordish, the developer of the Power Plant at the Inner Harbor, had previously been expected to go for a Baltimore waterfront location: the shore of the Middle Branch.
Cordish’s group was the only one to submit the required application fee for a slots casino of at least a thousand machines. This indicates that developers consider slots in Maryland to be more viable as either a small diversion or a suburban drive-by pursuit than the kind of lucrative destination recreation envisioned by slots proponents.
It also continues a time honored Maryland tradition. Fifty years ago, slots were a mainstay of little roadhouses along the side of highways and byways of southern Maryland. These slots later morphed into the “amusement purposes only” poker machines that continue on the scene. Keno was the state’s primary legal attempt to get in on this action, up until now.
Proposals for small slots parlors at Baltimore’s Middle Branch, Ocean City’s Ocean Downs, and Perryville’s Outlet Mall would continue this evolutionary trend. Cordish’s Arundel Mills proposal is a long shot, but it would simply do for slots what suburbia has already done to the old ma and pop roadhouses – bring them into the big-time suburban mainstream.