Personally, I think casinos are crummy, scummy places. The establishment is there to screw the customer over, in a glitzy and “exciting” environment. The customer may think s/he can “win big” because of advertisements or “word of mouth” or whatever,  so s/he may go to the casino, first for the “entertainment”, but then s/he may become addicted to gambling. And the money that goes to the casino may have gone to buy groceries or pay the utility bills…..and families suffer.

However, I can’t stop people from self-destructing, so…..

A couple of weeks ago, there was a meeting held at the Palms at Pelican Cove (aka The Cormorant) about another casino project on St. Croix.

According to the Casino Control Commission rules, casinos must be associated with hotels with a certain number of rooms. We’ve already observed, in the Paul Golden situation, that the  CCC does not follow its own rules, nor does the legislature, so I say to John Boyd, the guy who wants to build this, “Good on ya!” and, “Go for it!”

Boyd wants to build a stand-alone casino, with space downstairs for shops and restaurants. Sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t believe tourists who come to the Caribbean are all about casinos. There are casinos all over America and Europe. People who like casinos have them close at hand, and don’t have to pay exorbitant airfares to get to their favorites.

Anyway, Boyd believes that local people, who already drive all the way out to the Divi Casino on the East end, will spend more time in Christiansted, if his plan goes through. There are parking areas on the outskirts of town where people could park (the casino would provide security at these lots) and be shuttled, again courtesy of the casino, to the casino/shopping/restaurant complex.

So, I am not opposed to someone putting a casino in Christiansted. First of all, it would not be in the heart of the historic district, destroying the cultural beauty of the town. Secondly, it would draw more local traffic (hopefully keeping those speeding drunks off our east end roads), and support the existing businesses in town. Security in town would probably be beefed up as well.

But best of all, it would keep that scummy, crummy, element away from our precious environmental gems along our beaches and coastlines.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.