Special Report Part Four

Although it was the target of some rather uninspired graffiti artists the night before, one still could make out the name “Marnell Corrao Associates” on a temporary sign in front of a massive construction site on Las Vegas’ famous strip.

On this day in early April, the company’s construction crews are working on La Reve, a $2.4 billion Parisian fantasy that developers promise will be the grandest resort on glittering Las Vegas Boulevard, the only place in the world one can walk from New York to Paris – or rather casinos based on those themes – in a matter of minutes.

The Las Vegas company, whose name has been a fixture in the city for decades, now is setting its sights on Maine, where it hopes to play a role in developing a $650 million Indian casino in the southern part of the state.

“We’re very confident it makes sense and very hopeful that voters will find that there’s no reason the Indians shouldn’t have a casino,” said the company’s treasurer, Jay Barrett, during an interview at his spacious office, where a copy of “Restitution,” a history of the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, sits alone on a table in the corner.

In November, Maine voters are set to decide whether “to allow a casino to be run by the Passamaquoddy Tribe and Penobscot Nation if part of the revenue is used for state education and municipal revenue sharing.”

If the deal is approved, the tribes stand to gain upwards of $50 million in annual revenue, while the state could receive more than $100 million, according to estimates provided by casino supporters. Marnell Corrao also is poised to get hefty, multimillion dollar contracts to design, build and possibly manage it.

While both tribal and company officials insist that details of Marnell Corrao’s future involvement have yet to be made final, Barrett said his company nevertheless is prepared to put its money behind its message in hopes of making the casino a reality. However, he backed off – only slightly – from earlier reported statements that the company would spend “whatever it takes” to prevail at the polls.

“Obviously, there’s a business aspect to this that must be considered,” said Barrett, whose company already has given more than $400,000 in in-kind contributions to Think About It, a pro-casino political action committee, and its local branches. “But we are willing to spend what’s needed to educate voters on this matter.”

It’s clear that the company, set to invest millions in a Maine casino, has the money and experience to make the project a reality. For constructing La Reve – French for “The Dream” – Marnell Corrao will receive nearly $920 million, according to reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Casino opponents issue almost daily denouncements of the “Sin City” connection to the project, with one state senator, Democrat Ethan Strimling of Portland, calling the Las Vegas casino business “an industry fundamentally based on deception.”

“It is,” agreed Dennis Bailey, spokesman for the anti-casino group Casinos No! “The house always wins and they make you think you’re going to get something for nothing. That just ain’t going to happen.”

Major player

Marnell Corrao is a major player in the gaming industry, which recorded gross revenues of $65.7 billion in 2001. And despite the anti-Vegas sentiment espoused by Casinos No! and its allies, the company is respected by those who accept gambling as a part of American culture.

“I think its fair to say they have a very good reputation,” said Dave Schwartz, an independent industry analyst with the Gaming Studies Research Center in Las Vegas. “They’ve done a lot of work in this town.”

Walking down the Las Vegas strip, a five-mile boulevard of high rise hotel-casinos and giant video screens flashing images of each resort’s headliners, one never is out of sight of a Marnell Corrao project.

There’s the $300 million New York, New York casino, where a 150-foot Statue of Liberty looms over a 300-foot-long replica of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Families crowd the sidewalk in front of a giant lagoon outside Treasure Island, another $300 million Marnell Corrao project, to watch the late-afternoon show in which pirates sink a British frigate during a cannon battle marked by small explosions and billowing black smoke.

Then there’s the $1.8 billion Bellagio, both designed and constructed by Marnell Corrao, and arguably the most extravagant property on the strip. On a spring evening, tourists lined up to watch the resort’s $40 million fountain, where jets and lights are choreographed to 25 different songs ranging from opera to country.

A $650 million Maine casino would be a “significant property,” Barrett said. It would mark the firm’s largest foray into Indian gaming, annual revenues from which have grown 71 percent to nearly $13 billion nationwide since 1997.

Indian connection

While the firm has focused on commercial casinos thus far, it also has worked with a few Western tribes. It is working on an expansion of the 1,250-member Fort Mojave Indian Tribe’s Avi Resort and Casino.

On the shores of the Colorado River in Laughlin, Nev., the Avi resort, built for about $38 million, is undergoing its first major expansion since opening eight years ago.

“In this business, you need to have somebody who knows the business,” Avi’s general manager Les Clavir said of his reasons for choosing Marnell Corrao for the $17 million job, the first phase of a $45 million expansion. “You don’t just want somebody who builds anything.”

The Indian-owned resort has been successful competing against Laughlin’s mini Las Vegas strip upriver for a number of reasons, Clavir said, including its low prices and capacity for hundreds of recreational vehicles.

Because Avi is a tribal operation, it also was able to create a beach on the riverbank, a right denied to non-Indians who are forbidden from altering the shore.

Along that shore on a recent afternoon, a few dozen tourists sat beneath straw umbrellas while a pair of personal watercraft buzzed up and down the river.

Just a few hundred yards away, Marnell Corrao’s construction crews scurried around the steel frame of the new hotel and movie theater complex set for completion in August.

High atop the unfinished structure, 56-year-old Ken Fields, a Mojave Indian, worked under the hot sun carefully tying together reinforced steel to secure the beams that will hold the building’s roof.

Recently hired by the Marnell Corrao crew as part of a tribal program that gives preference to members, Fields, a carpenter for 25 years, said this was one of the better jobs he has had.

“They talk to you pretty straight up.” said Fields, his hard hat adorned with a painted feather. “We do what we have to to get the job done.”

Long road ahead

Before Marnell Corrao crews can begin work in Maine, casino supporters first must convince Mainers to legalize casino gambling.

For Barrett’s company thus far, that has meant, along with Portland lawyer Tom Tureen, footing the bill for much of Think About It’s political endeavors.

In the months ahead, it likely will mean spending millions of dollars on television advertising, with pundits estimating the final cost of the campaign at $5 million.

Anti-gambling interests warn of the entrance of a major Las Vegas player into a small state such as Maine, which like many other states, has fallen on financial hard times.

“They have lots of money and they’re getting smarter,” said David Robertson, a board member of the Washington D.C.-based National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion, of major casino developers in general.

But Robertson said well-financed casino advocates haven’t always prevailed in their efforts. He cited a failed 1994 try to legalize gambling in his home state of Wyoming, in which a Nevada-based developer outspent opposition 10-to-1.

But this is not Marnell Corrao’s first foray into politics.

Several years ago the company’s ownership, reportedly in an attempt to head off competition for Nevada casinos, spent about $500,000 in a failed effort to stop legalized gambling in neighboring California.

California now is home to no less than 50 Indian casinos from the Oregon border to San Diego.

No one is predicting that kind of proliferation in Maine, where industry analysts say a casino in the southern part of the state would be heavily dependent on Boston tourists.

But if a company of the caliber of Marnell Corrao is involved, those analysts say, there’s a strong likelihood a Maine casino would realize some profits in an underserved New England market.

“If anyone like Marnell Corrao gives you something, they’re going to get something in return,” explained Schwartz with the Gaming Studies Research Center. “They obviously have a keen business sense and are expecting to make that money back.”

Bailey of Casinos No! said his objection to the Las Vegas involvement rests less with their campaign spending and more with what he called a “lack of disclosure” about the firm’s ultimate financial stake in the Maine casino.

“I think voters need to know how much of what they lose at this place is going to Las Vegas,” he said.

Barrett said his company has not yet discussed the details of a management or construction contract with the tribes, but he offered no apologies for wanting to invest in Maine, where he owns a summer house on Westport Island near Wiscasset.

“I thought [Maine] wanted outside investment. I thought they widened the Turnpike so more people could come in,” Barrett said. “Which is it?”

Tomorrow: A state divided