Palace Inn owner tries hand at slots
HARRISBURG — Pittsburgh developer Craig Cozza will get a chance today to tell state gaming regulators why he should get a slot machine license for his resort hotel, the Palace Inn in Monroeville.
And the term “linear miles” is likely to get quite a workout.
Mr. Cozza is in a contest for one of two valuable resort hotel slots licenses that the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board will award. Each license gives a resort the right to have 500 one-armed bandits.
Two of Mr. Cozza’s competitors are from the Poconos area of northeastern Pennsylvania — the Resort at Split Rock in Lake Harmony, Carbon County, and Fernwood Hotel and Resort in Bushkill, Monroe County.
The fourth entry is the Valley Forge Convention Center in Montgomery County, which is near the giant King of Prussia Mall and close to the Valley Forge national historic center.
The hearings into the Category 3, or resort hotel licenses, began yesterday, with Valley Forge and Split Rock making their pitches. Palace Inn and Fernwood will be up to bat today.
Gaming board officials expect one topic of conversation today to be the precise distance the proposed Palace Inn casino would be from an already approved casino in Pittsburgh, Don Barden’s Majestic Star on the North Shore.
The July 2004 casino law says that one gambling palace can’t be closer than 15 linear miles from another one. Some people, using maps of the Pittsburgh area, have said it appears the Palace Inn is between 13 and 14 miles — in a direct aerial line — from the Barden site between the West End Bridge and the Carnegie Science Center. Mr. Barden hopes to open his casino, with up to 5,000 slots, in early 2009.
Gaming board spokesman Richard McGarvey said it could come down to measuring distance “as the crow flies” or by the shortest driving route using local streets between the Palace Inn and the North Shore.
Board Chairwoman Mary D. Colins said the board will hire an engineer if necessary to measure the distance.
Mr. Cozza told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in July that he thinks the Palace Inn, a Monroeville landmark that closed in June 2004 after years of hosting wedding receptions and concerts, meets the 15-mile separation requirement listed in the law. But his competitors are likely to question that claim today.
The gaming board yesterday started the first of three rounds of hearings on the resort hotel license applications. Besides showing that their resorts don’t lie within 15 miles of another casino, developers have to show their facilities contain important amenities for visitors, such as at least 275 hotel rooms, restaurants, spas, golf courses, tennis courts, conference facilities or performing arts centers.
If the four applicants pass this initial hurdle, public input hearings will be held next spring at the four locations, then final hearings will be conducted by the board in Harrisburg. The decisions on which two applicants get the resort hotel slots licenses aren’t likely to be made before summer.
This is the second time the board has tried to give out resort hotel licenses. The first two applicants, Nemacolin Woodlands in Fayette County and Seven Springs in Somerset County initially applied but later backed out.
The seven racetrack casinos in the state, and the five non-track casinos, will each have up to 5,000 slots. Hotel casinos can have no more than 500 each. To gamble on them a person has to be a guest of the hotel or a user of one of the other amenities, such as golf, tennis, restaurants or conferences.