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Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force Chairwoman Sounds Off
Co- chair of the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force Anne Swager, who also serves as the director of the American Institute of Architects of Pittsburgh, recently gave a five- page interview to a Pittsburgh design magazine called "Columns." In her interview, she criticized a variety of components of her city's slots gambling license bid process. She took issue, specifically, with the gambling laws, and with politicians and lawmakers involved in issuing the license.
Firstly, Ms. Swager voiced concerns about the number of slots gambling machines that lawmakers currently plan to allow in the casino. With 3,000 slot gambling machines on the table, she said, Pittsburgh's casino would be too big by a long shot, and could end up looking like a "shed."
"Everyone worries that they're going to build a windowless place -- but with 3,000 slot machines, there's going to be a lot of space without windows," Ms. Swager said in the Columns interview. "Come on! It's too big! It's a shed!" She said that she was afraid that a casino that was too big would resemble a Wal-Mart.
Instead of setting out a specific number of allowed gambling slots machines, she said, the law should be less "prescriptive," and work with whichever company is chosen on an individual basis to decide on the appropriate number of machines.
Ms. Swager also objected to other aspects of the law, which she said made it hard to create a well- designed site. "From the perspective of the design community, I'm critical of the (gambling) law. It's not that I'm plain flat-out critical of the law. I want a really good design and something that fits within the community. I think that's been made more difficult by the law."
Ms. Swager came down hard on the politicians and lawmakers involved in the gambling machine license process, calling their actions in the process "politics as usual." The politicians, she said, seek to rush the process without taking the long- term consequences of their decisions into account.
"[The politicians] need the money. They staked their public policy on being able to relieve property taxes, and they have spent the expected revenue many times over," said the task force co- chair.
Ms. Swager's co- chair of the Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force, Ron Porter, said that he had not seen the interview in the architectural magazine, and therefore declined to comment.
The Pittsburgh Gaming Task Force was appointed by former Mayor Tom Murphy to be a voice representing the community in the gambling machine license process. However, the group has no actual control over the ultimate decisions made regarding the gambling license; the state Gaming Control Board makes the important decisions. That organization is expected to award a gambling slots license for Pittsburgh, not earlier than 2007.
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