Greene County gets its casino license

Country cannibals are more acceptable than city cannibals, according to the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission.

The commission voted 3-2 today to grant Greene County a state license for a planned Wild Rose casino/hotel/convention complex near Jefferson. A couple of months ago, the same commission voted down Cedar Rapids' casino bid 4-1.

This time, Chairman Jeff Lamberti and Commissioner Rich Arnold voted yes. They both voted no on Cedar Rapids' application. Delores Mertz voted yes on both proposals.

According to market studies commissioned by the gaming commission, both Greene County's casino and Cedar Rapids' facility would draw most of their revenues from existing casinos. The dreaded 'cannibalization” we've heard so much about.

In Cedar Rapids' case, that diagnosis was fatal. But for Greene County, it wasn't.

So what gives?

Well, it's all about the way you cannibalize. And portion size.

A market study by Marquette Advisors found that 79 percent of Greene County's estimated $28 million in annual revenue would come from existing casinos, or about $22 million. The same study estimated that Cedar Rapids would get 73 percent of its revenue from cannibalization, or $59 million. So Cedar Rapids' take from the casino cartel is more than two and a half times as large as Greene County's.

And Greene County's casino would take smaller bites from several casinos, $6 million from Prairie Meadows, $4.5 million from Meskwaki and $3.2 million from Wild Rose Emmetsburg, with lesser amounts from several others. Wild Rose will own the Greene County facility, so in that case, it's friendly cannibalization.

So Greene County's impact would be smaller, and it would be spread around.

Cedar Rapids would take one very big bite from Riverside's revenue, $25 million annually, according to Marquette, along with a $10 million chunk of Waterloo's action. So its impact would be larger and more concentrated. And, if you believe Riverside, more damaging.

The commission, by a slim single vote, decided today it could wedge one more cornfield casino into the existing cartel. But a hungry urban casino? No dice. Never mind that market trends suggest, in the long run, an urban casino close to its customers would have been a smarter call.

But this was no surprise. Having seen Greene County's terrific pitch to the commission, I expected its license would be approved. I was actually surprised the vote was so close.

How does this affect Cedar Rapids wafer-thin chances of resurrecting its casino dreams? Probably not much. The barriers standing between Iowa's second-largest city and a casino already are very, very high, and that's not going to change anytime soon.