Folks Flock To Colorado’s New Casinos Central City And Black Hawk Are Realizing The Pluses And Minuses Of Entertaining A Gambling Crowd
It’s Sunday morning on Eureka Street in this old gold mining town high in the Rockies, but the sounds heard from the sidewalk are neither church bells nor choir. The sounds are of money.
From the open doors of what used to be bars, cafes and hotels, or hardware stores, blacksmith shops and groceries, come the gongs, boings, clangs, and burbles of slot machines in action, accompanied by the hissing noise created by many thousands of coins all in motion at the same time.
It’s Colorado’s new gold rush: casino gambling. Like so many other parts of the nation, the state has taken to wagering as a way to make money, and folks are flocking in, particularly on weekends, to give up their fair share.
Practically every building in Central City and the adjacent town of Black Hawk has been turned into a casino. All feature slot machines, and most also include blackjack and poker tables. The little guy is here - the one-story, faded gray-brick Pony Express Casino has 25 slots and that’s it - and so is the big guy. Harrah’s has well over a thousand slots and tables at casinos in both towns.
The stakes are limited - $5 is the maximum bet - and gambling exists only here, an hour’s drive west of Denver, and in one other location in the state, the town of Cripple Creek. Yet the gross proceeds for the year that ended Sept. 30, 1994, in these three towns totaled about $307.6 million.
“So far it’s been very beneficial to everybody,” says Mayor Don Mattivi, whose family has lived in Central City for five generations. “The big fear was that we’d be bringing in all kinds of crime and prostitution, but none of that has appeared. The worst thing that’s happened is that there has been an increase in the number of (police) stops for driving under the influence.”
The biggest benefit, Mattivi says, and you can’t find anybody in Central City or Black Hawk who disagrees, is that many of buildings in both towns - the historic ones in particular - have been rebuilt or restored. A proportion of the gross, you see, is specifically targeted for historic restoration.
“Since gaming started in 1991,” Mattivi says, “we’ve put over a million dollars back into the community just in terms of restoration projects.”
Central City, in particular, shows this because it’s much larger than Black Hawk. It has more than three times the year-round population (meaning a total of about 300 residents) and many more historic structures, including three churches and the town’s buff stone Opera House, which opened in 1878 and is still going strong with an annual summer season.
Central City’s history goes back to 1859, when a prospector named John H. Gregory made his way up a gulch of North Clear Creek and found what he was looking for: gold. His discovery precipitated Colorado’s first major gold rush, followed by a building frenzy that even included a little culture - a few theaters, for example, and an opera house.
The growth was such that for a few years Central City rivaled Denver as the territory’s largest settlement, and there are no fewer than nine fraternal, religious and municipal cemeteries on the hilltop above town to prove it. The mining dwindled to insignificance as the new century dawned, although there are still a few small gold operations.
Eventually, Central City evolved into a mountain tourist town whose main attraction was the Opera House, supported by the elite from Denver who came in for the summer season, owned houses in town, and even saw fit to have their daughters make their debut here each June. When the voters approved gambling, there was more than a little consternation in these ranks.
“We went from being sold out to not being able to fill our seats,” says Nancy S. Parker, board president of the Central City Opera Association. “It’s been a slow climb back; I believe we’re about 87 percent sold right now. People did not want to go to Central City any longer because they did not want to associate with gamblers, or they were worried about parking. Of course, we will never get a lot of those supporters back, and we are looking to a new, younger crowd to fill the gap.
“On the other hand,” she adds, “the city actually looks much better. It’s cleaned up. There are flowers all over in summer. The buildings not only look better, they are safer. So there are good things along with the bad.”
After the summer season this year, Parker says, the Opera House will break precedent by staging a month-long series of country-andwestern performances by major stars, in cooperation with the local casino association.
“They are supporting us financially, which has been great,” Parker says.
The players come mainly from within driving distance - including the usual senior citizens on daily bus excursions - and there are few high rollers among them.
Up the street at the Station Casino, part of which was once a brothel, one of the owners, Craig S. Ball, interrupts his blackjack dealing to talk to a visitor.
“This town was falling down before gambling,” he says. “There was tourism, but it wasn’t much. Most of the buildings that were left were vacant and falling apart. The town wouldn’t have lasted another 10 years without gambling.”
Ball’s casino is small - 103 slots and only two blackjack tables - but he says it has survived where other small operations have failed by attracting a repeat clientele with good payouts and cheap drinks.
“We bring people back, and we keep them longer,” said Ball, 29, a Texas native. “Of course, they can never really ‘beat’ us, but they can do much better than the industry average.”
Black Hawk may be smaller than Central City, but since it’s the first town off Route 119, which runs north from Interstate 70, it gets the most business and the most traffic. The little town’s airspace is now dominated by a huge, white crane that will be used to construct a seven-tier parking deck to be carved into the side of one hillside.
More than 4,000 people are employed in gaming here, and 12,000 to 20,000 gamblers come in on any given day. Central City’s police force has gone from two full-timers and two part-timers to 16 full-timers, says the mayor. Parking remains a problem, with private lots charging $5 a day. The city has temporarily solved the problem by building a lot on top of an adjacent hillside and running a shuttle downtown.
Mattivi acknowledges that the traffic, and the drunks, are drawbacks, and that gambling has generally put the town to the test in terms of its infrastructure. But the improvements, he says, have been worth it - residents now pay less than a quarter of what they used to shell out in taxes, thanks to increased assessments in the gambling district.
Central City, he says, recently opened its first major casino-hotel, the 118-room Harvey’s, and plans to eventually develop into a full-service resort community.
“Any time you go through this kind of change, you’re going to have some problems and complaints,” he says. “But overall, it’s been beneficial.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: If you go Getting there: Central City and Black Hawk are about an hour’s drive west of downtown Denver, at an elevation of about 8,500 feet (you may feel the altitude difference, in shortness of breath, fatigue and possibly headaches). Staying there: It’s mostly bed-and-breakfast establishments, although Harvey’s Wagon Wheel hotel-casino recently opened in Central City, with 118 rooms starting at $65 a night, double. Phone 800-427-8397. For a list of B&Bs, or for more information on either town, call the Gilpin County Chamber of Commerce, 303-582-5077. Don’t miss: While you’re in town, try to take the tour of the Central City Opera House and the historic hotel next door, the Teller House. Tours are run out of the Teller House, now a casino operated by a Swiss company. Scenic drives: In good weather, two scenic drives are recommended here. One, called the “Oh My Gawd Road,” goes south nine miles from Central City to Idaho Springs. The other, the Peak to Peak Highway, goes north from Black Hawk to Estes Park, about 60 miles.