GARY | Casino owner Don Barden went head to head with Councilman Roy Pratt on Monday, vowing to take legal action if Pratt fails to call off an attempt to get Barden stripped of one of his two casino licenses.
"All the negative press is not good for my company," Barden said.
Barden was in town for an otherwise routine meeting of the City Council Ways and Means Committee, in the wake of a move by Pratt for a council resolution urging the state to remove one of Barden's gaming licenses.
Tempers flared in a room packed with Barden supporters, and committee chairman Kyle Allen at one point pounded the gavel to avoid "a shouting match."
Barden said the city has failed after 11 years, and what he said has been nearly $1 billion in revenues paid to city and county coffers by his casinos, to build an overpass leading to his Buffington Harbor-docked Majestic Stars I and II.
The failure has cost the operation millions of dollars in lost revenues and forces customers through a labyrinth of local streets leading to the casinos, Barden said.
Pratt, an at-large Democrat, said the city would be better off if one of Barden's gaming licenses were in the hands of a major casino company, like Harrah's Entertainment Inc., with pockets deep enough to put in roads and other improvements to a Gary casino.
Barden said the state has no reason to revoke either of his licenses, one attached to his original riverboat, Majestic Star I, and the second that came with Barden's 2005 acquisition of the former Trump casino.
But if that were to happen as Pratt has urged, Barden said, he'd be forced to shut down a casino, halting revenue payments to the city and state.
"Does that make any sense to anybody?" Barden asked.
Pratt said it would make more sense for Gary to put one of the two casino licenses awarded the city by the state more than a decade ago to work on Interstate 80/94, where a casino would be far more visible and better able to compete with neighboring casinos, whose owners have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in improvements.
Barden said he's willing to consider moving one of his casinos to a site on Interstate 94 if the city will pay for a feasibility study of such a move.
Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, who sat in on the meeting, said afterward he'd like to see the study done.
Clay said he'd "like to see Barden prosper," and that he doesn't see eye to eye with Pratt in calling for revoking one of Barden's licenses.
"I don't think Councilman Pratt and I are on the same wavelength," Clay said.
A vote on the Pratt-sponsored resolution was tabled earlier this month and could be taken up again when the full council meets tonight.
Barden said business will keep him from attending the meeting.
