http://www.syracuse.com/news/state/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1138874266162760.xml&coll=1

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Senecas bet music, Sabres fans will gamble
Thursday, February 02, 2006
PATRICK LAKAMP BUFFALO
Would you try your luck at a slot machine after driving to Buffalo for a Sabres hockey game or concert? %%par%% The Seneca Nation of Indians wants to make that bet. %%par%% The nation on Dec. 9 broke ground for a casino on a nine-acre site in Buffalo's Cobblestone neighborhood, two blocks from HSBC Arena, where the Sabres and bands like U2 and Bon Jovi draw sellout crowds. %%par%% Work crews have demolished two brick warehouses on the site. Architects are competing to design a 100,000-square-foot casino with room for 2,200 slot machines and 50 gaming tables. %%par%% The Senecas envision a $200 million project, called the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino, with a 2,500-vehicle parking ramp, restaurant, buffet and retail shop. They want to open sometime in 2007. %%par%% Eventually,
hockey fans may not have to walk even a few blocks to gamble. The Senecas are eyeing the long-vacant upper level of a train terminal behind the HSBC Arena for additional gambling space.

But the casino project faces challenges. Religious and community leaders have filed a federal lawsuit trying to block it.

"When I first got involved in this, it was with more a feeling this kind of enterprise didn't belong in a family-oriented city," said Joel Rose, co-chairman of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County. "We're trying to promote attractions like the zoo, and it didn't make sense to create an image of Buffalo as a honky-tonk kind of place.

"But the more I learned, I became convinced it's economically devastating for any community who hosts a casino."

Foundations,individuals and some businesses near the site joined the anti-casino group in the lawsuit, claiming the federal government did not properly apply the law governing the approval of Indian casinos.

The Senecas don't appear worried.

"Lawsuits come and go," Seneca Nation President Barry E. Snyder Sr. told The Buffalo News at the recent opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino's adjoining hotel in Niagara Falls. "They don't interest me. We took the opportunity to build a casino and hotel in Niagara Falls because no one else would do it. I've said the same of Buffalo, and we're going ahead."

At the Buffalo ground-breaking ceremony, protesters held anti-casino signs and chanted "Shame on you" and "More harm than good."

Former Mayor Anthony M. Masiello, who left office just weeks after the ground-breaking, criticized the lawsuit.

"You havenine acres of abandoned land with total taxes of about $31,000 and the Senecas want to build a state-of-the-art casino, employing 1,100 people, with a $40 million annual payroll and about $11 million to the city," he told the News. "Why would you want to stop that?"

Rose said most casino patrons would be Buffalo residents - not Sabres fans from Syracuse or Rochester.

"All you're doing is sucking money out of the community," he said.

The city would lose more jobs elsewhere than the casino would create, he said. But the misery would never leave.

"With a new casino," he said, "you create new gamblers and new gambling addictions."

Patrick Lakamp, a former Post-Standard reporter, writes for The Buffalo News.