Bangor OKs permanent racino deal Penn National to start $70M project in ’07 or ’08

BANGOR – More slot machines – and the revenues that come with them – are heading for Bangor.

Months of intense negotiations came to a successful conclusion Monday night when the City Council approved several moves critical to Penn National Gaming Inc.’s $70 million-plus permanent racino project. The agreements sailed through to passage in a series of unanimous votes at City Hall.

“We got ‘er done,” Council Chairman John Cashwell said after the votes took place. “I’m not Larry the Cable Guy, but it works anyway.”

Representatives from Penn National and its Maine operations, Hollywood Slots at Bangor, and Bangor Raceway, where the company has an off-track betting parlor, said they were pleased to see the project move forward.

“This is just one more step in a long and winding path leading to a great future here in Bangor,” said Steve Snyder, Penn National’s senior vice president for corporate development and one of several company officials who attended Monday’s council meeting.

The councilors’ support for the project hardly came as a surprise.

City officials have been some of the biggest cheerleaders forthe permanent racino, which will almost quadruple the Pennsylvania-based company’s current work force of about 130 employees – and generate at least $2.1 million a year for the city in the form of property tax and lease payments and the city’s share of slots revenue.

That revenue will be used to help pay for a replacement for the city’s aging auditorium and civic center. The city already has earned more than $500,000 from Hollywood Slots in Bangor, the temporary slots facility in the former Miller’s Restaurant on Main Street, which has been operating for six months.

Penn National’s permanent gambling complex, which will house up to 1,500 slot machines, is proposed for the so-called Riverside Block, which encompasses the land between Lincoln and Dutton streets from Main Street to the railroad tracks.

The permanent racino will replace Hollywood Slots. It will include a parking garage, restaurant and retail space.

Penn’s off-track betting operation, now operated out of the grandstand at city-owned Bangor Raceway, also will be housed in the new facility.

Most of the land Penn National is arranging to buy is occupied by a Holiday Inn belonging to Mahaney Properties. Kevin Mahaney, son of the late Bangor businessman Larry Mahaney, owns Mahaney Properties.Construction on the new complex, which will be located on Main Street across from Bass Park, will begin in 2007 or 2008, depending on the outcome of talks with the last remaining lease holder, the real estate firm Re-Max Advantage, which holds a lease on its building through February 2008.

According to Snyder, Penn National will pay more than $7 million for the several properties that comprise the site.

Larry Mahaney had negotiated an option on the adjacent Main Street Inn and the two houses behind it, but the option expired March 31. Penn National wound up dealing directly with the properties’ owner, Chiou Lin of Hampden.

The hotel properties, across the street from Bass Park and Bangor Raceway, are among the few commercially zoned properties large enough to accommodate Penn’s proposed 150,000-square-foot permanent facility and attached multilevel parking garage within the 2,000-foot radius of Bangor Raceway required by state law.

Cashwell said Larry Mahaney deserved much of the credit for cobbling together the Riverside Block, which allowed the city to retain Bass Park for such traditional activities as harness racing, the Bangor State Fair, various conferences, conventions and trade shows, to name a few.

Moving the racino across Main Street also helped avoid some potentially serious traffic backups by eliminating the need to cross two lanes of traffic to reach Bass Park from points south and Interstate 395.

“Right up to the week he died, [Mahaney] was checking in personally with me” to see how he could help facilitate negotiations, Cashwell said.

Others who weighed in on the racino project included:

. Tom Palmer, a hotelier and Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce board chairman, who said the temporary racino already was generating spinoff business at local hotels, the Bangor Mall and other places.

“Their numbers are all up, and that’s been steady since November” when the temporary slots parlor opened, he said.

. Charlie Birkel, a longtime resident, who has patronized Hollywood Slots and the OTB, who praised them as “delightful, clean and relaxing. They should be given a round of compliments for a job well done in the city so far.”

. Diane Cormier, owner of Diva’s Gentlemen’s Club, said Hollywood Slots has had a positive impact on her business.

“I know a lot of people win, and then they come over and are giving it to the girls,” she said. “I love them,” she said of Hollywood Slots. “I’m glad they’re here.”