After the Mayor gave the commission a bus tour of the proposed site and flood impacted areas of the city this morning, a heated hearing started at 10a at the Double Tree, with the commission hearing the public's opinion.  Quite the packed house too!



Reports seem to be saying most of the room was full of backers of the Casino, accompanied by opponents mainly from competing casinos in Eastern Iowa.

As you might recall, this all started back in 2012 with a petition needing just under 12,000 signatures, that received over 15,500.  That was followed by the March 2013 vote, with 61% of voters approving the casino.  However, even with the seeming public support, there's still plenty of opponents, who are certainly making their voices heard today.

Despite the previous approvals, today's visit is critical for supporters.  If you recall, from the Waterloo meeting in February, the commission seemed to be quite concerned with studies showing a CR casino would take a substantial chunk of revenue from other corridor casinos, with the claims the Iowa market is already over-saturated.  So today's goal is to win them over with a supposed two fold plan.  One is to tell the story of how the city has recovered from the flood, and will be able to continue that recovery with help from the casino. This was highlighted by that bus tour this morning.  The second is the argument that the public is in big support of keeping their gambling dollars local, the jobs the casino will create, and that competition amongst casinos is good for making all of them better overall.

Today's visit is the casino's last chance, as final approval is slated to come April 17th.

Cedar Crossing Casino
Cedar Crossing Casino
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