Economic committee backs casino

OXFORD — Members of the town Economic Development Advisory Committee lent their support to a renewed effort to bring a resort casino to the town Tuesday, unanimously voting to recommend that the Board of Selectmen support the venture.

Peter Martin, spokesman for Black Bear Entertainment LLC, said the group of local business owners in support of the initiative want to put the casino in an area of the state where it would provide employment for an available work force and revitalize the economy.

"We rewrote this bill and changed a lot of what has been called offensive language from last year," Martin said.

Martin served as an adviser for a proposal to put a resort casino in Oxford, which failed at a statewide referendum last year but gained strong support in the town and county. Originally run by a group called Evergreen Mountain Enterprises, the effort was later purchased by Las Vegas-based Olympia Gaming.

Opponents charged that the casino would reduce the state's gambling age from 21 to 19, allow credit to be extended to gamblers, lead to more infrastructure costs and crime, and not draw in significant numbers of tourists.

Backers of the casino promised that the more controversial aspects of the bill would be amended by the Legal and Veterans' Affairs Committee of the Maine Legislature. Under the new proposal, no changes would be made to the gambling age, the president of the casino would not be seated on various boards and oversight committees, credit would not be extended to gamblers, a 10-year moratorium on casino construction would be replaced by a current law separating facilities by at least 100 miles, and the number of slot machines at the casino would be limited to 1,500.

Rupert Grover, an owner of Grover Gundrilling in Norway and member of the group, said a resort casino would help to make Western Maine more of a tourist destination.

"Our thought this year is that between losing the mobile home people, and the wood people, and other businesses that are going out, we need something in this area," Grover said.

Three of the economic development advisory committee's five members were present, and all voted in favor of recommending support of the measure. They are Chairman Tom Kennison, Ron Kugell and Dennis Fournier. Absent were Caldwell Jackson and Dan O'Neill.

The committee and Board of Selectmen both supported last year's casino effort, which proposed a $184 million resort casino to include a hotel, spa, and restaurants on a 40-acre parcel of land.

Martin said the group is working on a final design for their casino proposal, but estimated that it would create approximately 1,000 jobs by the third year of build-out and more than $50 million in revenue to the state. Black Bear Entertainment is looking to gather 80,000 signatures necessary to put the question on the ballot in November 2010.

The proposal calls for the casino to be taxed at a rate of 46 percent. Of that amount, 25 percent of the revenue would go toward the state's K-12 Essential Programs and Services; 4 percent each toward the University of Maine Scholarship Fund and the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes; 3 percent each to the Maine Community College System Scholarship Programs and Maine Gambling Control Board; 2 percent to the town of Oxford; 1 percent to Oxford County; and 1 percent  each to the state's dairy stabilization, agricultural fair support, sire stakes, and harness racing purse funds.

According to materials from Black Bear Entertainment, 1 percent of revenue is equivalent to about $1 million.

Black Bear's members are led by Stephen Barber, the former CEO for Barber Foods in Portland. Other members include Rob Lally, co-owner of Mt. Abram Ski Resort in Greenwood and a Boston real estate developer, and Jim Boldebook, founder of Creative Broadcast Concepts in Biddeford.

mlangeveld@sunjournal.com