There will be a casino in Maine. It might not be built next year or the year after that, but there is enough public support to concede that a casino is an inevitability here.

The gamble for voters is in selecting the best, most businesslike project. The casino proposal that will go before Lewiston voters, which we know next to nothing about, is not that project.

Stavros Mendros, Florentia Mendros, Ron Chicoine, Peter Robinson and New Hampshire residents Tim Poutre and Wendy Chicoine-Poutre — doing business as Great Falls Recreation and Redevelopment LLC — would like to build a full-scale casino at the present site of Bates Mill No. 5.

To make that happen, the partnership asked the City Council to grant a $150,000, two-year option to buy the 4.77-acre site on the corner of Main and Lincoln streets in the city’s downtown, currently valued at $357,300. There are at least 10 other smaller parcels just outside the mill building’s footprint included in the suggested option, though, making the total land value well over $2 million.

The City Council, rather than acting on the request, has opted to put the question before voters. But what question is that exactly?

The public has been told nothing about the size, the cost, the financing, the services and other amenities, provisions for increased traffic and parking, or the look of the casino. Voters are being asked, on faith alone, to consider the group’s option to buy without having any detail about what might be constructed in that very prominent downtown location. Faith and even hope are not enough, especially when considering a project that will radically change the cityscape.

Mendros & Co. has said that once the option to buy has been approved, the details of the project will be revealed. That’s backward.

If voters are to make an educated decision about whether to reserve this parcel, holding off all development there for two years, they need details to consider what the future might look like. Especially since the possibility of a casino may chill other business development in the downtown.

A concern about the Lewiston partners that should be significant to voters is the fact that they were exceedingly hesitant to go public. Here they are asking for enormous public support, but are themselves unwilling public figures. The missing courage of individual conviction demonstrated here is not comforting.

Where Lewiston has failed, Black Bear Entertainment LCC has so far succeeded.

Black Bear’s proposal to build a resort casino in Oxford will be on November’s ballot. Unlike the partners in the Lewiston project, the Black Bear partners were quick to reveal themselves, distributing business and political bios as soon as their project was announced. They have been vigorous in striding the public stage to earn the public’s support.

Black Bear announced the size, services, investors, accommodations for traffic and parking, as well as many other details about the project up front. That project is well-backed and well-organized and the campaign is well-funded.

The project in Lewiston is none of these things.

We’re not prepared to welcome Maine’s first casino just yet, but we recognize that the Black Bear project is businesslike and focused, like a development proposal ought to be. We don’t see any hint of that from the Great Falls proposal in Lewiston. Here, the project is still a daydream.

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