MGM Springfield Concerns Spur City to Extend Pawn Shop Ban

Springfield, Mass. City Council has voted nemine contradicente to offer a forbiddance of new pawn shops and second-hand jewellery dealers inward the area, WAMC northeastern United States Public Radio reports.

The council implemented the censor inward 2014 when MGM Resorts officially applied for a certify to control a gambling casino in the city.

Three years earlier, MA residents voted to alter the nation makeup to tolerate gaming, creating iii casino licenses and ane for a slots parlor. The MGM Springfield opened its doors inwards 2018.

Poverty Line

Supporters of a gambling casino in the urban center hoped it would make for jobs and much-needed economical rejuvenation. In the twelvemonth before the vote, 26.8% of the population of capital of Illinois were infra the poverty line, according to the US Census Bureau (USCB).

But others worried that a swelled casino would hold a electronegative effect on the city’s large low-income community.

Such resorts are usually placed forth from metropolis centers, but the MGM Springfield was to follow built inward downtown Springfield. City councilors were interested the new casino would bring an roll down of businesses that preyed on stricken gamblers.

Springfield continues to feature a disproportionate portion out of hock shops and used dealers when compared with other Gateway Cities across the Commonwealth,” City Councilor Mike Fenton told WAMC Wednesday. That’s why he believes the forbidding should remain inwards place.

There are six pawn shops and 30 used dealers inward the city, which has a population of around 154,000. In nearby Worcester, with a universe of around 185,000, on that point are tetrad pawn shops and 20 secondhand stores.

Pandemic Skewed Data

In 2014, the council also implemented a system that requires hock shops to keep electronic records, including photographs, of items they accepted. Fenton said this had been successful in reducing crime and curtailing the secondary market place inward stolen goods.

But the city council hasn’t been able-bodied to perform a right example work on whether the casino’s arriver increased the number of hock browse transactions because information has been skewed by the pandemic. The gambling casino closed in(p) for four months inwards 2020 and reopened with reduced capacity.

Extending the moratorium on soak shops for another trio years testament tolerate the council to gathering to a greater extent data which it hopes will reply that question.

The honest word is that the MGM Springfield has non had a disastrous wallop on the city’s impoverishment levels. But neither has it dramatically improved them. According to the USCB, impoverishment levels inward Springfield in July 2021 were at 25.5%, down feather 1.3 percent from 2011 when households were ease feeling the vellicate of the Great Recession.

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