The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has granted a state license for a casino in Cedar Rapids. The vote was four-to-one.
There will be a groundbreaking tomorrow for the Cedar Crossing project.
“We’ll be moving dirt tomorrow, wasting no time in getting this up and running,” Cedar Rapids Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell said. “Linn County, Cedar Rapids deserves this. It’s only taken us 12 years to get here.”
The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission has twice before voted down casino license applications from Cedar Rapids and just last week the Iowa House overwhelmingly voted in favor of a moratorium on new casinos, but the bill was tabled in the senate yesterday.
“To say that this was a long shot was an understatement,” O’Donnell said. “I have said from the very beginning this was ‘David versus Goliath’ and by god, the story ended the same way. Let’s hear it for David today.”
During today’s commission meeting at the Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino in Altoona, Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission chairman Daryl Olsen of Audubon said Cedar Crossing is far different from the two previous casino projects the commission rejected in 2014 and 2017.
“If this was just another gaming facility, I’d be voting no, but this provides so much more. It provides amenities, restaurants, a 1500 person venue for entertainment, arts and culture center, a STEM lab,” Olsen said. “It is so much more. It’s unique and it provides so much more than gaming and that’s so important to me.”
Amy Burkhart, another “yes” votes on the commission, cited studies indicating the state would collect about $10 million more in gambling taxes once the Cedar Rapids casino opens — but gambling tax revenue will decline without it. “Looking at the state of Iowa, and I won’t requote the numbers, but all I see is net gain,” she said. “I see net gain as far as tax revenues for our state.”
Burkhart, who is from Burlington, said she was contacted by a number of people in southeast Iowa who shared their thoughts about a Cedar Rapids casino that would compete with the ones already operating in her area. “This commission is not laid out in way in which people are appointed to represent a specific geographical area,” Burkhart said. “I really do have to, for my personal integrity, look at that I am an Iowan today and not representing a particular area.”
Gaming commission member Julie Andres of Okoboji acknowledged the decision would be unpopular with existing casinos, but she voted to grant the license.
“I don’t think a project that is desired by a local communities, gives that community an opportunity to thrive and develop, meets and even exceeds our standards for quality of design and amenities and then provides a unique and differentiated product in that market and provides a net gain of revenues to our state should be denied,” Andreas said.
Commissioner Mark Campbell of Otho said he concluded the market can support a new casino in Cedar Rapids.
“A question that has surfaced from several individuals is whether this decision would open ‘Pandora’s Box’ for gaming in Iowa. I want to assured everyone that I do not believe this to be the case,” Campbell said. “As a commission, we have worked diligently to evaluate this application and will continue approach all future applications with the same level of thoroughness ad care.”
Alan Ostergren of Altoona was the only commission member who voted no. Ostergren said by his own calculation, the studies found the increase in state gambling taxes would be 12-hundredths of a percent.
“I personally would come on not disrupting our existing operators to that extent based on that negligible increase in revenue to the state as a whole from this,” Ostergren said.
An attorney for the Riverside casino indicated a lawsuit will be filed today challenging the commission’s decision. The legal argument? The Linn County gambling referendum approved in 2021 was worded incorrectly and the casino application should not have been considered.