Richmond Casino Referendum Dropped, Developers Cite State Concerns
The capital of Virginia gambling casino referendum that urban center officials sought-after(a) for the Nov 2022 ballot is being delayed by a year.
Richmond was i of 5 cities the land qualified through and through 2020 legislation to consider a gambling casino project. Each city is required to inquire their local voters to control if they wishing to grant a cassino contrive to add up to their towns inward dictate to generate an economic spark.
Richmond was the only if metropolis of the fistful that rejected the opportunity. Richmonders narrowly tinned a proposed $565 zillion gambling casino called One Casino + Resort during the 2021 election.
Richmond officials, including the urban center council and Mayor Levar Stoney (D), trust the electorate got it wrong. The metropolis governance believes a casino is inwards its best interests and wants to re-ask voters to clear the commercial gaming initiative.
But tell lawmakers, prompted past nation Sen. Joe Morrissey (D-Richmond), who has a political grievance with Stoney stemming from his 2016 mayoral loss, get successfully plugged Richmond’s 2022 cassino referendum. In the state’s 2022-2024 biennium budget bill, lawmakers included a purvey that prevents capital of Virginia from holding a second cassino referendum until November 1, 2023.
Clearer Messaging
One Casino + Resort, pitched by Urban One, a Black-focused media empire with no experience edifice or operating a casino, was selected by the Richmond government to live the city’s preferred casino developer. The programme crush come out proposals from extremely experienced gaming operators such as Bally’s, Golden Nugget, and The Cordish Companies.
Urban One’s selection raised some eyebrows. And the company’s ballot campaign, at least inward hindsight, was ineffective.
Urban One focussed as much on being a minority-owned troupe and perhaps decorous the 1st Black-owned commercial cassino manipulator inward the United States as it did on presenting the economic benefits that the terminus would cater the region.
The Nov 2021 cassino referendum vote was largely split among demographic lines. Sir Thomas More wealthy neighborhoods voted against the project, while poorer parts of town — including the Southside where One Casino was to live reinforced along I-95 — voted inward the affirmative. The balloting narrowly went against the cassino 51% to 49%.
Morrissey convinced his State Capitol colleagues that the commonwealth should count allowing Petersburg, which is just now due south of Richmond, to deliberate hosting Richmond’s casino. The senator persuaded say lawmakers to include the budget purvey blocking Richmond from re-asking its residents almost a gambling casino for a year inwards order of magnitude to appropriate the commonwealth to contemplate the merits of relocating the gaming license to Petersburg Campaign through and through additional legislation.
Casino Developer Folds
With say law trumping urban center ordinances, capital of Virginia officials this calendar week conceded that their planned 2022 gambling casino referendum would encounter effectual challenges should voters opt to financial backing the project. As a result, the metropolis is foregoing the 2022 gaming question.
Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins said the budget speech “has created a infringe … and a Brobdingnagian cloud of doubt” over the merits of holding a 2022 referendum. The city afterward proclaimed its detachment of the casino question for 2022.
“The City of Richmond, at the quest of our longstanding community of interests partner, Urban One, is preparing to file away a petition to transfer the gambling casino referendum from the November 2022 ballot. Understanding Urban One’s reasoning, the city stands ready to move the proposed One Casino + Resort send on inwards 2023,” a urban center statement explained.