ICE CUBE: Bart Blatstein rolls the dice

POSTED: Thursday, October 25, 2012, 2:00 PM

Filed Under: Ice Cubes

You have to admire Bart Blatstein’s confidence. After an hour-long happy hour at his grand Tendenza Hall in Northern Liberties — just doors from his Piazza at Schmidt’s — the developer announced plans for his $700 million casino, resort, and entertainment complex at the legendary former home of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News on North Broad Street, with Hard Rock International as its gaming operator, called The Provence.

Blatstein doesn’t have that gaming license yet (he has until Nov. 15 to submit an official proposal for Philly’s second casino license). He faces steep competition from Penn National Gaming, Inc. (for land along the Delaware River just north of SugarHouse Casino) and Cordish Co. of Baltimore (they want the Philadelphia Turf Club on Packer Ave. in South Philly, supposedly) to say nothing of opposition from Casino-Free Philadelphia.

That isn’t stopping Blatstein. In his mind, his epic design for the block-long enterprise — a casino at Callowhill between 15th and 16th streets at 120,000 square feet, with table games in the one-time newsroom of The Inquirer and a 125 room hotel in its legendary tower — was just the start. Blatstein traveled from China to Macao (it’s a tough job but somebody has to do it) to France for inspiration for his Provence and promised it would be “no casino in a box,” a phrase repeated several times throughout the presentation.

The Provence’s rooftop would feature blocks worth of shops and restaurants designed to match a French streetscape. There would be a swim club, an indoor garden, live music clubs, a comedy club, and a spa (the discussion of a live music club portion should have pleased invited guests like Larry Magid and Bryan Dilworth, a casino would be a nice addition to their bookings). Other guests amongst the 150 invitees including Nino Tinari, Howard Eskin and Jimmy Tayoun seemed equally enthused by Blatstein’s speech and his video presentation.

Starting with casino supportive City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, the invited guests seemed uniformly appreciate of Blatstein’s developmental initiatives. Along with Northern Liberties and its Piazza, Blatstein’s Tower Investments has taken on North Broad Street from the Pearl Theater near Temple University, the newspaper offices, and starting next month will begin renting apartments in the converted State Office Building at Broad and Spring Garden streets.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” Clarke said. “This is what it’s all about.” A second casino would offer “the most significant economic opportunity for the city of Philadelphia.”

The crowd was most enthused though by Blatstein’s introduction of his casino operator, Jim Allen. The chairman of Hard Rock International said the Provence would not be “just a gaming destination” before mentioning that he’s a one-time local with a house down-the-shore and a hometown gal for a wife, Isabelle from South West Philadelphia.

I may have been in opposition before the last few weeks but I must say I’ll drink the Kool Aid on this: Let’s get Blatstein that license.

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Posted by A.D. Amorosi @ 2:00 PM Permalink | 1 comment

Comments (1)

0 like this / 0 don't • Posted 5:43 PM, 10/27/2012

"A French streetscape"...Is that a joke? Has anyone associated with this project ever even been to France? Provence (no "The") is an agricultural region. Why call this faux-Frenchified, big-box "resort" after this region? It'd be like the Parisians building a dude ranch/casino in the middle of their city and calling it Le Texas.
Why do we YOkels insist on mortifying ourselves constantly on such a large scale? This project is ridiculous...

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