Get more from a future casino in Cedar Rapids

So are we getting a casino, or aren’t we? The plans for this amenity seem like they have been a yo-yo for nearly a decade.

In all of this, though, I feel like we are losing sight of a few key issues. The service industry jobs a casino will bring will be all right, but not great. And the consumer dollars that will be spent in our community will be concentrated in the casino itself and will have little overflow into other nearby businesses.

And then there is the social impact, as the president of the Wellington Heights Neighborhood Association, I can say definitively that Wellington Heights residents will lose considerably more money at the casino than they will win.

The managing corporation for the casino, Peninsula Pacific Entertainment, is based in Iowa. But that doesn’t mean it won’t take money out of our community. “But they will give 8 percent back to local nonprofits,” I keep hearing. First of all the 8 percent is just a promise at this point. Second, why should we allow our nonprofits to be co-opted by giving them only 8 percent? That sounds like settling to me.

I think we should receive more, and there is an Iowa precedent for that.

Polk County owns the land where Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino is located. The casino is leased to a 13-member nonprofit board and is operated as a public-private partnership. Prairie Meadows pays out more than 20 percent of its revenues in the form of grants to nonprofits.

We could give more than 8 percent back to our local nonprofits. After all, it was nonprofits like Matthew 25 who stepped up after the flood of 2008 and the 2020 derecho and got houses fixed up. And it’s Willis Dady who is in the trenches helping get people into shelters and housed. It’s Horizons who feeds our elderly and gives rides to work for those struggling with transportation.

We could use the money to better fund the schools so that we wouldn’t have to choose between SROs and counselors, we could have both. And instead of calls for defunding the police, what if we used the money to fund all of the support services so that gaps in coverage don’t have to be plugged by law enforcement and police can get back to keeping us safe instead of being called to handle mental health crises.

There is local precedent with the city-owned DoubleTree Hotel, and honestly even if the hotel isn’t a huge moneymaker it still is crucially important for our downtown to be able to attract conventions and events. The city owns parks that enrich our lives, the city partnered in the development of NewBo Market that revitalized the whole neighborhood of Oakhill Jackson. The city can also own or partner in ownership in a casino for the purpose of enriching all of our lives. This will allow us to have local control over how the casino interacts with local businesses, and how much the casino jobs pay and how the proceeds get distributed.

Last year Prairie Meadows brought in $215 million, in comparison the cameras bring in $3 million to $6 million per year. It’s our time Cedar Rapids, let’s make bold moves and take back control of the direction of our city.

Eric Gutschmidt owns Gutschmidt Properties Inc. in Cedar Rapids.