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Letter to the editor

Gulf casinos on new hot streak

The rebound after Katrina has been swift for casinos, slow for other commerce.

BILOXI, Miss. - The highway along the Mississippi Gulf Coast would be forlorn if not for the casinos, which are having their best year ever.

The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has proved to be little more than a temporary setback to the conversion of formerly sleepy beachfront communities into the Las Vegas of the Deep South.

Although affordable housing is scarce and businesses have had trouble getting insurance coverage to rebuild since the storm, 11 casinos are open in Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis and Lakeshore. Two are under or nearing construction and there's talk of more coming.

"A lot of businesses haven't reopened and aren't going to reopen," said Pat Probst, a security supervisor at Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi. "The casinos are probably the only thing that has kept our economy going."

On U.S. 90 joining Gulfport and Biloxi - known locally as Beach Boulevard - there is not one working gasoline pump. Only a handful of noncasino restaurants have reopened.

Along a highway once known for stores hawking beachwear and souvenirs, only one outlet caters to tourists looking to lie in the white gulf sands, a chief attraction before gambling began in 1992. The others have been demolished or are storm-shattered shells.

Gili Ovakanin, comptroller of Surf Style, said the summer season was slow. Still, he's not discouraged.

"We have a lot of faith in the city of Biloxi," he said. "We believe it's going to come back and be better than it was before."

The 12 casinos operating along the coast two years ago were no match for Katrina's winds and storm surge on Aug. 29, 2005. At the time, state law required the gambling portion of the resorts to be on barges in the water.

In a special session called quickly after the storm, the state Legislature decided to let coastal casinos build on shore.

"A lot of the casinos, more than half, said that if they had to come back on the water, they wouldn't have reopened," said Beverly Martin, executive director of the Mississippi Casino Operators Association. "It affected their insurance."

So far, casino companies have spent $1.7-billion rebuilding along the coast, according to the Gulf Coast Business Council, a corporate executives group.

The casinos currently employ 17,000 people. About 70 percent of the 10,000 hotel rooms available on the coast are at casino resorts. Each casino is averaging 5,000 visitors per day, matching pre-Katrina figures, Martin said.

[Last modified October 12, 2007, 01:02:21]