Comments on: Collins Discontinues County Lawsuit to Block Casino

By: TseTse

TseTse — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 01:09:15 +0000

depending .. SGC pays a minimum starting wage of 8.25 / hr. for parking attendants, dishwashers, housekeep etc….

Dealers, Waiters/Waitresses starting (including tips est is approx 16.00 / hr). Salried employeees like marketing, accountants, IT is negotiated separtely based on experience. SGC also provides health benefits and 401ks.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 05:10:09 +0000

Frieda, 98% of the jobs created by the casino pay about as much as a walmart or mcdonalds and are part time. Paving the street around the casino and the remodeling of a out dated hotel is not spin off. Maybe if the workers at the said casino could unionize they might be able to make a living wage, but not likely, labor laws are non-existant within the senca nation. Please show me some spin off and i wont use the rule of thumb stick.

By: BFLOnian

BFLOnian — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 04:38:32 +0000

I mean I really LOVE the term. Works both ways. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jon and his family for years.

By: TseTse

TseTse — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 02:25:30 +0000

Not to worry about competition with other hotels. The Seneca Gaming ,as a rule, only rents rooms to Casino Patrons. What was strange about Mr Giambra getting the county involed in the suit, in the first place, is that he was a regular at the Seneca Niagara.

By: hank

hank — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:50:24 +0000

This is quite upsetting. Collins said this was his position throughout, but between listening to Hardwick on the Internet, reading the Snooze (for what that’s worth) and reading here, I don’t remember coming across THAT particular plank in Collins platform.

Just to blow most of you away, Joel Rose and I are aquainted,2 summers ago when I was home he came to the Croatian Club in Riverside and had cockails with myself, Allen Coniglio, Rus Thompson, Ostrowski and some of the RonPaulistas from FNY.

We consider each other friends and allies re the Casino.
So a Conservative expat from NC and and a Liberal academic from UB
CAN find common ground. My reasons for being against the Casino/Hotel are different than Joel’s but we both agree on each others reasoning.

If the Senecas are allowed to build a Hotel/Casino downtown, you might just as well demolish the Adam’s Mark, and from what I’ve read about the Hyatt, blow it up too. God Save the City.

By: Jwalker

Jwalker — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:31:43 +0000

What is the difference between A slot profit sharing agreement and payment in lieu of taxes?…. NADA. What is the difference between an article and an editorial? …only the page it is printed on.

By: wcp

wcp — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:13:56 +0000

It was an editorial, not an article in the News. A PILOT to the State? Show me, it wasn’t in the article you linked to. Unless you are referring to the slot profit sharing agreement.

By: Frieda

Frieda — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:33:37 +0000

Another pathetic article from the Buffalo News. It would have had more credibility if written by a two year old. . I guess when you don’t know the figures, the rule of thumb is to round everything up to the nearest billion. And if you don’t know the figures then you are not required to differentiate between a revenue stream and profits. For detail of 2007 figures for Seneca Gaming Corp (all casinos and hotels) see business first

http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2007/12/31/daily7.html?ana=from_rss

total revenue stream 725 million. Costs: payroll (90 million for Niagara Falls alone) , Advertising (100+ million) , payment in lieu of taxes to the state (100+ million) , and we haven’t got into servicing the debt on the infrastructure, the cost of insurance, food and supplies etc. etc. etc.

By: Vivian

Vivian — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:20:44 +0000

if they rented rooms to non-gamers there would be complaints that they would be competing with the rest of the hospitality industry

By: wcp

wcp — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:13:37 +0000

Does this count as a Buffalo-based solution to economic problems?

Check out the guest editorial in today’s News…
http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/anothervoice/story/243189.html

“..when Brian Hansberry, in an effort to distract from the sad economic realities discussed in the article, states “. . . the [Seneca Gaming] corporation has made a $450 million investment in the city” he is being disingenuous. He might add that this investment on the Senecas’ own land has yielded more than $1 billion for the Senecas and $23 million for Niagara Falls.

If Hansberry didn’t “spin” the investment issue enough, when asked why the casino’s hotel refuses to book rooms to larger nongambling conventions, he states that they do not yet have enough rooms to meet both the casino’s and the city’s needs for space.

What Hansberry doesn’t tell us is that on average, approximately 440 rooms per day, every day, are given away free to gamblers (source: filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission). Remarkably, the corporation would rather provide a free room to a gambler then allow a nongambler, who might spend money outside of the casino, to pay for the same room. This behavior is very cynical and anathema to the corporation’s claims of being an economic stimulus to Niagara Falls. Perhaps the corporation could see fit to allow a few of these 161,000 free rooms given away per year to be booked by nongambling conventioneers; after all, the city gave the Seneca Nation the former Niagara Falls Convention Center to be developed as the casino.”