The casino industry’s efforts to bring jobs and opportunity to areas in need of revitalization was on display Tuesday morning in Schenectady, New York, the latest stop on the American Gaming Association’s Small Business Jobs Tour.
The city, located just west of Albany – the state capital – has undergone a prolonged economic downturn since General Electric relocated its headquarters from New York to Connecticut in 1974, kickstarting an outflow of thousands of manufacturing jobs from the local economy.
“When I was a kid there were 20,000 union jobs down the street. Schenectady relied on GE, no one needed anything else but GE,” said Jeff Stark, president of the Greater Capital Region Building Trades Council, at the AGA event hosted at Rivers Casino and Resort, the $330 million facility that was opened earlier this year by Rush Street Gaming.
“After GE started to shrink their workforce because of different factors… this was not a place that a lot of people wanted to live,” he said.
The number of manufacturing jobs in the area has dwindled from 30,000 four decades ago to just over 5,000 today. The impacts of this exodus have been harsh: as recently as 2015, nearly half of the city’s children under the age of five lived below the poverty line – a rate that has been on the increase since the Great Recession.
But Stark is pleased to see the gaming industry join as a partner in injecting new life into the city. “There is life after GE,” he said.
Rivers Casino is doing its part to bring new tax revenues and economic development to the city, including revitalizing its downtown area and opening a new 1.5 mile stretch of the Mohawk River to the public. In just seven months, it has generated $2.6 million in revenues for local governments and $21 million in revenue for the state to be used for education.
“Rivers Casino has fast become an important part of our community,” said Gary McCarthy, mayor of Schenectady. “Not only does the casino provide jobs, but the entire facility enhances the hard work we’ve put into making downtown Schenectady a fun place to be and a great place to do business.”
John Bonacic, a New York state senator who has advocated the expansion of gaming, applauded the efforts of Rush Street and its local partners on the project,
“I think it’s a great thing and we’re seeing all the benefits of it,” he said, highlighting the private sector investment and job creation, as well as the “economic development ripple effect” that provides a boon to the many small vendors that feed into a casino’s supply chain.
Bonacic, who represents the region to the southeast of the Capital Region, also issued a rebuke to critics of the state’s casinos.
“Those people that never wanted any gaming to go forward in New York, they’re already out there in press saying ‘Oh, they’re not meeting their expectations,’” he explained. “But this is just starting, these casinos. The one down in our area isn’t even built yet.”
More time is needed, Bonacic said, to draw any firm conclusions. “You need a good three year period before you judge expectations. And I say no matter what the expectations are, if they come out a little short, it’s [still] a huge success because of the benefits I talked about.”
Across New York, casino gaming employs 14,000 people and accounts for $827 million wages and $3.6 billion in total economic impact, according to the AGA. The trade group also reported that, in 2016, New York casinos grew revenues by 3.4 percent and direct gaming tax receipts by 3.3 percent year-over-year.
The AGA’s small business tour has also held events in Maryland and St. Louis highlighting the impact of casinos on local vendors and businesses. Nationwide, it found that the industry generates as much as $52 billion each year for small businesses while supporting $13 billion in wages paid out by those businesses.
