Citizens Applaud Two Planning Commissioners Who Bucked Pressure and Voted No on SugarHouse

Planning Commissioner Calls Casino Complex a 'Dressed-Up Wal-Mart'

For Immediate Release

The Philadelphia City Planning Commission yesterday approved the development plan for a casino slots parlor on the Delaware riverfront by a vote of 4-2, despite raucous objection by community activists.

According to Casino-Free Philadelphia organizer Lily Cavanagh, speaking in front of the panel, "This hearing is a farce. A redesigned SugarHouse casino slots parlor, if built, would be a clear testament to poor city planning, assuming there's any planning going on at all."

Cavanagh and three other CFP speakers left large plastic bags full of fake money near the commissioners' table, a reminder to all present that key casino backers, in their effort to impose slots parlors on Philadelphia, have contributed large sums to the election campaigns of many state and local officials.

See images from the event.

The dissenting votes came from two heroic commissioners, Nancy Rogo Trainer and Natalia Olson de Savyckyj, both of whom argued that the Sugarhouse slots parlor design was wrong for the riverfront.

Trainer said that the approval of the slots parlor represented a "missed opportunity" to make good use of valuable riverfront land. She criticized the "suburban character" of the Sugar House layout. "It could be almost anywhere and not on the banks of the Delaware," she noted.

The plan calls for a sprawling single-level big box structure and a huge parking lot. Olson de Savyckyj, in a succinct dismissal of the design, referred to it as a "dressed-up Wal-Mart."

Cavanagh praised the two dissenters, saying, "We applaud Ms. Trainer and Ms. Olson de Savyckyi for having the courage to resist the pressure of the elected officials, who for numerous weeks have been singing the praises of the casino plans presented yesterday."

Casino-Free Philadelphia's attorney Paul Boni said, "This so-called one-story casino would actually be 60 feet tall" and will be surrounded by a "sea of surface parking."

Cavanagh added, "Our mission is to stop casinos from coming to Philadelphia and close any that open, and we will never stop fighting."

Casino-Free Philadelphia's mission is to stop casinos from coming to Philadelphia and close any that open. The benefits of casinos can never outweigh the social and economic costs from an industry reliant on addiction to survive. Visit us online at www.CasinoFreePhila.org.

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