With Live! Casino open, it’s time to reconsider how we divvy up Philadelphia’s gambling payout

The most successful architectural feature at the new Live! Casino and Hotel in South Philadelphia isn’t the serpentine canopy that winds around the facade or the colored lights that siren-call motorists skimming along I-76 toward the Walt Whitman Bridge. It’s not the assertive pitch of the hotel roof or the faculty club vibe in the steakhouse. And it’s certainly not the Matrix-like pods of chattering slot machines on the casino floor, now tricked out with acrylic glass barriers for pandemic-era gambling.

No, the best part of the casino’s design is the broad, tree-lined sidewalks that seamlessly connect the 10th Street side of the building with Citizens Bank Park. That gracious streetscape makes it possible for those two enormous, and notoriously anti-urban, buildings to behave in a more urban way.

You’ll need to use your imagination to visualize it right now, but one day there will be Phillies fans streaming out of the ballpark onto that sidewalk. What they’ll find won’t be the usual blank-walled box, but an almost normal building, enlivened by windows, an outdoor dining area, and arched entryway. Designed by Eric Rahe and Milton Lau of BLT Architects for the Baltimore-based Cordish Companies, this is a casino that acts like it belongs in a big city.

The Live! Casino is the last of five mandated gambling venues to open in the Philadelphia area under the terms of the 2004 state law legalizing casinos, and it is easily the best of the bunch architecturally and urbanistically. Of course, that is not saying much given that the others tend to be auto-focused boxes designed to efficiently part people from their money.

The effort to establish (or, rather, impose) legal gambling in Philadelphia has been going on so long that the issues that animated the early debates have been lost in time. Gambling was promoted as our economic salvation, a way to reduce the city’s pesky, job-killing wage tax, boost our hospitality industry, and help struggling race tracks. Because Philadelphia was then the largest American city to allow casinos — the most regressive form of taxation — we were told that the gaming halls would be buildings worthy of a great city, with restaurants, shops, spas, and theaters. We were so taken by those claims that we flirted with the idea of a downtown casino on Market Street.

Instead, we got a Walmart-size box bobbing in a sea of asphalt as our first casino. SugarHouse (now Rivers Casino) gobbled up a gorgeous, 21-acre piece of Delaware waterfront in the burgeoning Fishtown neighborhood. We almost ceded a second, beautiful waterfront site to Foxwoods Casino.

Fortunately, though, Foxwoods failed and Cordish took over, moving the project to Packer Avenue. With I-76 to the north and a massive food distribution warehouse to the east, it’s no beauty spot. That’s a good thing. Because Live! is really an extension of the sports complex, its presence on the north side of the Phillies’ ballpark adds a bit of density to that underused district.

Unlike Rivers, Live! occupies every inch of its 10-acre site. Because the $700 million development includes a 208-room hotel, it is able to offer more nongaming attractions, including two sit-down restaurants, a meeting center, and a ballroom that doubles as a concert hall.

The architects have managed the not-insubstantial trick of designing a building that addresses both the car and the pedestrian. The “ribbon,” as they call the undulating, beige canopy over the main entrance, is big enough to stand up to the scale of the nearby stadiums. But the casino also has two pedestrian entrances, with sidewalks all around the building.

The most welcome pedestrian gesture is the outdoor dining porch located between the portal and the ballpark. Ideally, it should have been bigger. The restaurant — really a collection of vendors called the 10th Street Market — should also have been separated by a wall from the casino floor, so that people under 21, the legal gambling age, could also enjoy the space.

Cordish was an entertainment company before it became a casino company, and it was instrumental in renovating the historic power plant that made Baltimore’s Inner Harbor a tourist destination. If the company is smart, it will apply some of the lessons it learned in Baltimore to 10th Street.

For instance, it could make it more pedestrian-friendly by inviting food trucks, tailgaters, or a beer garden to use the street. Because those attractions would be separate from the casino, they would be open to all ages. It’s too bad that Cordish didn’t recognize 10th Street’s potential from the beginning. The street could have been a great woonerf, a plaza-like design where sidewalks and street space are at the same level to make walking easier.

Now that Philadelphia finally has its two required casinos, it’s worth considering the impact of gambling on the city. Most of the early opposition focused on traffic and crime, but those issues have been insignificant at Rivers. One could argue that Rivers was a catalyst for the Fillmore development across the street. The casino also footed the bill for a very nice community center in Northern Liberties. Before the pandemic, Rivers employed 1,600 people.

But in terms of revenue, gambling has barely budged the economic needle. Rivers’ take has not lived up to original rosy projections. Slots revenue, which was expected to reach $300 million a year, has hovered around $200 million, a spokesman for the Gaming Control Board told me. As more casinos opened in Pennsylvania and nearby states, they have cannibalized one another. That pattern is likely to continue with Live! and the introduction of online gaming this summer will further erode Philadelphia’s take, since the tax rates are lower.

The larger issue is how Philadelphia’s local share is allocated. Most of the revenue Philadelphia receives goes into initiatives aimed at spurring job creation. About $86 million is set aside annually to reduce the city wage tax, which is said to deter companies from establishing offices in Philadelphia. That money has brought down the wage tax rate by over 6%, according to figures provided by the city.

The second big pot of money, roughly $42.6 million annually, helps pay off bonds used to build the Convention Center, which has been a boon to the city’s hospitality industry. Given the $450 million shortfall caused by the pandemic this year, the city is lucky to have the revenue.

But there is a third pot of money that does absolutely nothing for Philadelphia’s financial well-being, and it is time that the state’s gambling law was revised to redirect the funds. Since Rivers opened, city gamblers have contributed $180 million to the Race Horse Development Fund, a pool of money intended to support Pennsylvania’s horse racing industry. Never mind that there are no racetracks or horse farms within city limits.

Over the last 13 years, the state’s casinos have funneled an astonishing $3.24 billion to the racing industry, a subsidy of $14,500 a year for every thoroughbred in Pennsylvania, according to Education Voters of Pennsylvania. To put that in perspective, Philadelphia’s school district spends just $15,500 per pupil and Pennsylvania spends $5,200 on every state university student. How did we come to prioritize horses over education or racetrack jobs over better-paying knowledge industry jobs?

“Most of the wealthy horse owners don’t even live in Pennsylvania,” complained Susan Spicka, who runs Education Voters. Despite those billions, horse racing is in a downward spiral, with barely 10,000 people now employed statewide. This year, Gov. Wolf proposed to divert a big chunk of the horse fund — $199 million — to help Pennsylvania’s struggling state colleges. Of course, the powerful and wealthy horse breeders are pushing back hard.

Because of the pandemic, Philadelphia needs its share from Rivers and Live! more than ever. Now that we finally have a casino worthy of a big city, we need to make sure it serves its original intention: creating opportunities for the people who live here.