Wanna Bet?
Much was made recently of a feasibility study concerning adding a casino to Cedar Rapids. The history of racing and gaming in the modern era and Iowa’s second-largest city has been complicated at best.
Recall when pari-mutuel tracks were first approved in our state. Des Moines and Cedar Rapids both sought to get approval for a horse racing track, with the original thought being there would be two licenses granted. Instead, there was only one horse track, and it went to Des Moines. Cedar Rapids put all its efforts into that, so it lost out on dog tracks since Waterloo and Dubuque both were granted licenses and the thought was that the region was already saturated.
As our relationship with wagering has evolved from being limited to riverboats, voters have on multiple occasions approved having a casino in Linn County. A strong proposal a decade ago was somewhat surprisingly rejected by the state Racing and Gaming Commission.
So here we are in 2022, with community leaders touting the merit of a downtown Cedar Rapids facility. A map introduced at a recent meeting of the commission shows that Cedar Rapidians themselves are within a 60 minute drive of a casino…with other areas of the county 90 minutes away. That’s stated to show that a Cedar Rapids casino will no doubt draw business away from places like Waterloo, Riverside and Dubuque.
But it is a glaring omission, and the map shows it clearly. Obviously there are wider areas of western and southern Iowa with less casino access…but there’s also far less population there.
Of Iowa’s top 15 most populous cities…12 of the 15 have casinos. That’s counting Des Moines and its suburbs as being tied to the Altoona casino, etc. Of the top 15, Ames does not have one. That leaves the remaining two most populous cities on the list without casinos-Cedar Rapids and Marion.
I’m not taking a stand one way or the other, and you may be against gambling like this, which I respect. But if the argument the state is raising is that there’s not enough population, or that the areas 60-90 miles away would be affected…there are 180-thousand people in Cedar Rapids and Marion alone, and to deny the area the opportunity to secure investment, jobs, and tourism dollars seems misplaced.
