Everett Albertson of Canaan made the 40-mile drive to Bangor on Friday so that he could be one of the first to check out Maine’s first slots facility. Albertson, who is disabled, admitted he is a slots man.

“That’s all I do,” the older man said, adding that, for him, playing the slots is like golf is for others.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” he said of casinos in general. “I think every town should have one.”

Until now, Albertson had to drive five or six hours to get to Foxwoods, a well-known resort casino in Connecticut. With the opening Friday morning of Penn National Gaming Inc.’s Hollywood Slots at Bangor, Albertson said he now could indulge in Maine.

The facility, featuring 475 slot machines, is located on Main Street, in the former Miller’s Restaurant, which has undergone a more than $17 million overhaul.

“It’s a pretty good setup. I’ll probably come once a month. It takes care of the fever,” he said, adding, “It’s a heck of a lot closer than Foxwoods.”

The first patrons of Hollywood Slots at Bangor began arriving four hours before the 10 a.m. grand opening, forming a line that stretched from the facility’s main entrance to the sidewalk along the Main Street side of the building.

“Everyone is in great spirits,” Amy Kenney, manager for marketing and public relations, said as the doors were opened to patrons. “People are just having a blast.”

Laura Snyder of Eastport, who also has gambled outside the state, was among the first to arrive.

“I’d just as soon I leave my money in Maine instead of Connecticut,” she said, while waiting for the Hollywood Slots to open its doors.

Inside, gamblers perched on stools, sometimes singly and sometimes huddled together, focused intently on the gaudy, noisy machines. The lower-priced slots, going for 2 cents, a nickel and 25 cents, seemed to be constantly in use.

There was little talking among players – this was not a booze-and-schmooze affair, like the one held Wednesday night for the area’s VIPs. These people wanted to win. Security people in red blazers and wearing earpieces strictly monitored the activities, letting nothing get past their eagle-eyed attention.

“Ooh, daylight!” exclaimed one woman, who looked like a groundhog coming out on Groundhog Day, blinking in surprise as she left the windowless, clockless racino.

Paparazzi and protesters

Not everyone was enthusiastic about Friday’s grand opening festivities, which featured such Tinsel Town touches as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe look-alikes, a red carpet, searchlights, two limousines hired to serve as props, and plenty of “paparazzi,” namely area television, newspaper and wire service reporters, who were not props.

CasinosNO!, an anti-gambling group with headquarters in Portland, made its displeasure known Friday morning in a press release complaining that the slots facility, which was sold to state voters in 2003 as a way to help Maine’s struggling harness racing industry, is not located adjacent to Bangor Raceway, as originally planned.

“We hate to say we told you so, but we did … ” Executive Director Dennis Bailey is quoted as saying in the press release. “This was just a charade to get this casino approved so out-of-state gambling corporations can pick the pockets of Maine people.”

A small group of protesters appeared late Friday afternoon carrying religious-based signs, but didn’t stay long, according to slots security.

Later Friday night, searchlights zigzagged across the low cloud ceiling of the night sky, and traffic past the facility was constant. Local convenience stores were doing brisk business from the overflow crowd.

Racino officials had checked with Bangor International Airport before putting the searchlights in place. They could be seen all over the region, even as far away as Holden and Orono, according to reports.

The Penobscot Regional Communications Center, based in Bangor, received quite a few calls from residents in the area reporting what they were seeing, dispatch supervisor Betty Kilby said Friday night.

At least a dozen or more calls came in to the dispatch center. One caller from Brewer said the lights circled the sky and then came together and that was the “oddest thing he had seen,” Kilby said.

The Bangor Police Department also received a flurry of calls from concerned residents, beginning around 7 p.m., Bangor police Lt. Mark Hathaway said.

Penn National’s latest plans call for building a permanent gaming complex for up to 1,500 slot machines across Main Street from the raceway, on land now occupied by the Holiday Inn-Civic Center and Main Street Inn.

The shift was made at the city’s request, so events such as concerts and basketball tournaments can continue to be held at Bass Park.

Not surprisingly, many of those who showed up not only favor gaming, but already had been doing it on vacations and cruises.

Willie Corneau and his nephew Roland Blais drove up from the Lewiston area to play the slots. Both had traveled to Connecticut last month to gamble.

“This little place is really going to open things up,” said Corneau, a retired used furniture and antiques dealer, while outside on a cigarette break. He predicted the new slots facility would bring more businesses to the immediate area and help the ones already here.

“It’s nice. It’s cozy,” Corneau said of the facility’s interior.

“You also have no traffic,” he said, noting that some of his trips to Connecticut casinos had taken as long as five hours because of traffic volumes there.

Crowds and parking

While some in the city braced for traffic and parking problems, neither materialized Friday.

At the suggestion of Police Chief Don Winslow, the city put up along Main Street the electronic billboard it uses to help direct traffic during large-scale events such as The American Folk Festival.

The bulletin board alerted patrons that overflow parking and shuttle service were available at nearby Bass Park, where Hollywood Slots’ parent company operates an off-track betting facility and, during the spring and summer, harness racing.

In addition, the Police Department limited parking on nearby Larkin Street to one side and might continue to do so over the next few weekends.

Though it still is early, the slots facility seems to be a hit. General Manager Jon Johnson said that some 700 people came through the doors in the first two hours alone.

By midafternoon, between 500 and 600 people were inside playing slots, many of them retirees, which make up the core demographic for most gaming companies, though the crowd appeared to be getting younger as the day progressed.

While most of the slots were occupied, some were open for newcomers. There was ample space to move around, even in between the banks of machines. The bars and restaurant seemed to be doing brisk business, and for most of the day there was a line of people waiting to sign up for the Hollywood Slots Players Club, which allows gamblers to rack up points for promotional benefits.

As it stands, the city has not established a cap for the number of people who can be inside the facility at a given time.

Code Enforcement Officer Dan Wellington said that is because the city does not anticipate that the racino, which has 475 slot machines and a small restaurant, will attract much more than 500 or 550 people at a time.

“We weren’t overly concerned about their being overpacked. If you can’t get a machine, you’re not gonna stay,” he said.

He said, however, that he visited the facility twice Friday and found things running smoothly. He also consulted the Bangor Police Department, which had received no complaints as of late Friday afternoon.

“We’ve not heard anything yet,” he said.

Assistant Fire Chief Darrell Cyr said the Fire Department had no special plans to monitor attendance, unless a complaint is lodged. He said the State Fire Marshal’s Office has been known to do spot checks of places where people gather.

Johnson announced Friday that Hollywood Slots has cut a check for $5,000 for five local charities.

The company had planned to donate the proceeds of a charity play event and private party Wednesday to five area charities, but because several guests had hit jackpots – Johnson declined to say how large – the company did not make the profit it expected and added some its own money so that each charity would receive $1,000.

Otherwise, the preview event went smoothly, so smoothly that employees were given Thursday off to rest up for Friday’s big rollout.

Bangor Daily News writer Doug Kesseli contributed to this report.

Hollywood Slots by the numbers

Open: 10 a.m.-2 a.m. Monday-Saturday; noon-2 a.m. Sunday.

Total number of slots: 475 machines.

Payout: Slot machines will return 89 percent in random payouts.

Services: ATM on-site; restaurant and full-service bar.

Shuttle bus: Shuttle buses will run from Bass Park on Fridays and Saturdays to address overflow parking.

Betting options: Paper money or paper tickets are put into the slots.

A payout ticket issued at the end of play can be turned in for cash or inserted into another machine for more play.

2 cent bets: 43 machines

5 cent bets: 142 machines

10 cent bets: 17 machines

25 cent bets: 187 machines

50 cent bets: 24 machines

1 dollar bets: 49 machines

5 dollar bets: 13 machines