3/24/2003

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

Saving Butte by Destroying It?

Big-time national gambling developers have their eye on a new target: Butte, America. Flashing what they say is $1.8 billion, they are promising to turn uptown Butte into a mix of Las Vegas and Branson, Missouri: Ten casinos with 500,000 square feet of gambling space, three PGA golf courses, 40 music halls with 60,000 seats, a 15,000 seat stadium and a high altitude athletic training facility for professional sports teams and athletes. All of this is supposed to create 8,400 permanent jobs and a virtual flood of new tax revenues: $376 million a year, is promised to flow into Helena.

As with all previous campaigns to get communities to turn themselves over to outside gambling interests, this one begins with the proposition that if Butte does not agree to go along with this scheme, it is doomed. Butte is described by proponents of this gambling-as-salvation strategy as a “dying” community, and a future “ghost-town.” As one proponent said: “They might as well bulldoze the entire town into the pit if this [gambling proposal] doesn’t go through.” Or another: “What the hell, we ain’t got nothin’ to lose.” It is exactly this “beggars can’t be choosers” mentality that big time gambling developers count on to get their way with state and local governments.

Before Butte passively accepts this bargain with the devil, it had better contemplate whether in fact it has nothing to loose by being transformed into a high-stakes gambling center and inundated by millions of big-spending gamblers out for a little illicit excitement.

There are two parts to the question of whether a community “has nothing to lose.” First is the question of whether things are as horribly desperate as gambling proponents make out. Second is the question of what the impact of becoming a gambling and entertainment Mecca would be on the community.

Butte is not on the verge of becoming a ghost town. As the Anaconda copper operations shut down during the late 70s and early 80s, Butte-Silverbow’s population did decline by about 20 percent. Given that those copper operations were estimated at the time to represent three-quarters of Butte’s economic base, what was startling was how modest the adjustment was. Then, in the mid-1980s Butte’s population stabilized at about 35,000 where it has largely remained for about 20 years. During that time jobs expanded by about 20 percent, allowing real income to also rise. Per capita income in Butte is almost exactly at the state average instead of being ten percent below the state average as it was at the peak of mining activity in the mid-1970s. This economic record can be termed either stability or stagnation depending on how you want to spin the economic facts. But it does not depict a dying economy on the verge of ghost town status.

Some of the hysteria about the Butte economy is tied to continued bad news from Butte’s historic economic mainstays: The shut down of the last of the copper operations and the continued disintegration of the old Montana Power Company. Those certainly have hurt, but there can be no more downward drift from those sources. Butte has now weathered the complete loss of what was once its sole economic base and is still standing. If it has confidence in its character and place, it can face the future optimistically. If it thinks that there is no reason to live in Butte except for mining or, now, gambling, then that may become a self-fulfilling prophecy and Butte may well enter a death spiral. But 35,000 people have already shown that Butte is not only a mining town but is also a good place to live, work, and raise a family. It is a place with history and character. It is unique. It is Butte, America. That shared confidence and commitment to place and recognition of what is unique about Butte is the key to its future.

Turning the city over to organized gambling a la Branson, Missouri, will turn Butte into one gigantic theme park, trading on the visual symbols of its past for commercial marketing purposes, but retaining none of its integrity or character. Butte will become just a much larger Wall Drug, South Dakota, or Wisconsin Dells as hundreds of thousands or millions of thrill-seeking visitors inundate the city. It will be a Sturgis, South Dakota, biker rally 365 days a year.

This is not speculation. That is what has happened in the other Western mining towns that have traveled this route into high-stakes gambling: Deadwood, South Dakota, Central City, Black Hawk, and Cripple Creek, Colorado. The original structure of locally owned businesses has disappeared. The gambling industry calls all of the political shots. And nothing that resembles the original communities remains. In some cases, like Deadwood, population has actually declined. In all cases, outside investors have taken control of the local commercial infrastructure, focusing it on the visitors rather than the residents. As the new economic dependency develops, local regulation of the gambling industry falters because competition from more and more new gambling establishments around the state and the nation squeezes local profits and gives rise to demands for relaxed regulation, lower taxes, and more subsidies. Having made the bargain with the devil, the local community is in no position to resist its new master.

For those who believe that Butte has nothing to lose because it has nothing now, this obviously represents no loss. For those who see Butte as a city with a unique character in a unique location, it will be a tragic waste of an important part of Montana.