LEWISTON — Backers of a Twin Cities casino are cautiously optimistic about their chances at the polls Tuesday.

“Word of mouth, I think we’re in the 70 percent approval,” said casino proponent Stavros Mendros. That’s based on an informal telephone poll Mendros and his group, Great Falls Recreation and Redevelopment LLC, performed over the past few weeks.

It’s also based on the apparent lack of opposition.

“There is no organized opposition at this time, but that doesn’t mean everyone thinks it’s a good idea,” said Jim Handy, chairman of the Lewiston School Committee. “I think it’s a poor economic choice for the area and is going to end up costing us in the long run.”

Lewiston voters will get their first opportunity to decide the fate of the proposed casino Tuesday. If voters agree, the city will sign a sales option agreement with Mendros’ group for the Bates Mill No. 5 building and land on the corner of Main and Canal streets.

That would clear the way for casino backers to collect signatures for a statewide vote in 2011 legalizing the Lewiston casino.

Mendros and partners Ron Chicoine and Peter Robinson said Thursday they had received approval from the state to begin collecting signatures for the November 2011 ballot. They must collect about 55,087.

“We’ll begin right away,” Mendros said. “We’ll have people out this weekend collecting signatures, but also to campaign for the local vote.”

If Lewiston voters approve the proposal on June 8, the group will pay the city $150,000 in several installments through December 2011 for a purchase option on the property.

Mendros said he doubted the casino effort would continue if Lewiston voters turned it down next week.

“We’d have to re-evaluate everything,” Mendros said. “But hopefully, that’s not going to happen.”

The casino would mean economic development for Lewiston, bringing in between $2 million and $3 million in new property taxes and an estimated $3.2 million in casino revenues to Lewiston and other local governments.

But Handy said he think the costs of a casino would be higher than anyone expects.

“As the economic climate changes, so do the revenues from the casino,” he said. “But the costs won’t go away. We’ll still have to worry about traffic and crime. In the end, the only ones that will be making any money are the big casino groups.”

Handy said he was surprised that there was no organized opposition to Mendros and his group. Handy suspects most Maine anti-casino efforts are aimed at defeating a casino proposal in Oxford County this November.

“Believe me, if a group was organized, I would have joined it,” he said.

Casinos No! spokesman Dennis Bailey said the Oxford casino is the big concern now.

“It’s a matter of our resources, and they are limited,” Bailey said. “We are concentrating on the most immediate, and unfortunately, that’s how Bangor slipped in back in 2003. There were local votes going on all over the state, and Bangor passed their local vote.”

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