When Donald Trump, Don Barden and the owners of the Empress, the original Hammond casino, began courting local officials in the early 1990s about building casinos along the Lake Michigan shoreline, they promised economic development and job creation in Gary and Hammond, two cities that sorely needed a shot in the arm.
Minorities and Indiana residents would be given a large portion of the jobs, they said, and women and minority-owned businesses would get a percentage of contracts.
As the two Majestic Star Casinos and Hotel in Gary and the now Horseshoe Hammond celebrate their 20th anniversaries this month, there are still vacant buildings in the cities' downtown areas. Gary's unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in April and Hammond's at 7.1 percent, according to Homefacts, a website that provides employment, housing and other statistics for cities across the country.
Both were well above the national unemployment rate of 5 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The unemployment rate for the Gary metro area, which includes all of Lake and Porter counties, was around 6 percent in April, according to BLS statistics, the same rate the Indiana Gaming Commission reported for the region in March 1996.
Still, those in business and academia believe the casinos have proven to be a good gamble for the region economically over the last two decades in terms of job creation, spurring the local economy, helping various nonprofits and from the billions of dollars they've paid in taxes.
"They brought 4,000 to 6,000 jobs to cities that needed jobs desperately. That's 1.6 percent of all jobs in Northwest Indiana," said Micah Pollak, an assistant economics professor at Indiana University Northwest. "I'd call that significant."
Jobs, career driver
Pollak said the four casinos in Lake County, including Ameristar in East Chicago, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, currently employ about 4,000 people. The number was 6,000 before the 2008 recession and an influx of competition from other casinos and video gambling machines invaded the market.
The leisure and hospitality industry in the Gary area posted a 4.7 percent hike in jobs in April compared to the same month the previous year, according to the BLS, while other sectors were seeing a decrease.
Chareice White, director of government, community and public relations with Majestic Star, said the Gary casinos have 962 team members, 331 of whom are Gary residents and 102 of whom have been there the full 20 years. The Indiana Gaming Commission's 2015 annual report lists Majestic's minority employee percentage at 76, with 90 percent being Hoosiers.
Dawn Reynolds Pettit, regional vice president for human resources for Horseshoe Hammond, said the casino currently employs just under 2,000 people, 114 of whom have been with the company since the first dice were rolled. According to the IGC report, 62 percent of Horseshoe's employees are minorities and 70 percent live in Indiana.
Both White and Reynolds Pettit said their casinos are always hiring, from servers and housekeeping personnel to higher-level positions.
"I read that one of the steel plants is closing more lines. We have 70 jobs open right now," said Dan Nita, senior vice president and general manager at Horseshoe Hammond.
Reynolds Pettit said salaries at Horseshoe range from $11.50 an hour and up for entry level positions to more than $100,000 a year for directors and executives.
Both casinos have opportunities for moving up in the organization.
At Majestic Star Casinos, Steve Crosby, of Gary, Tom Gutierrez, of Crown Point, and Nicole Raudry, of Valparaiso, all started as dealers when the casino first opened in June 1996. Today, Crosby is a table game supervisor and Gutierrez and Raudry are both casino shift managers.
"There's plenty of room for advancement here. It's not just a restaurant and place to play. There are all kinds of areas to grow," said Gutierrez, who said he's had around seven promotions so far and hopes for at least one more, to director of table games, at some point.
Raudry concurred. "If I want to go to Las Vegas or the Caribbean, I can. I can go anywhere once I've been licensed," she said.
She said she was just turning 21 and a stay-at-home mom when she applied for her first job there. She has had four promotions.
John Houchin, of Valparaiso, is probably one of the bigger success stories. Houchin said he started at the Hammond casino at age 25 in June 1996, a little before the casino itself opened.
"I was a deck hand. It was a boat and it sailed back then. I was part of a crew that would tie and untie the boat and part of the clean-up crew," he said.
He started at $8.50 an hour.
Today, Houchin is director of facilities and IT for the casino. He's at a wage level that the casino doesn't reveal the salary, Reynolds Pettit said.
Co-worker Karla Dunn, of Crown Point, started working at the casino 20 years ago as catering manager at $24,500 a year. Today, six to seven promotions later, she's a marketing operations manager, in charge of the Total Rewards program and promotions. She has 35 people under her.
Houchin said he's lost count of the number of promotions he's received. He said the casino also helped by offering training and tuition reimbursement so he could get the schooling he needed.
White has been with Majestic for 17 years and has had five promotions of her own. Today, in addition to handling public relations for the casino, she also does some lobbying for her employer in Indianapolis.
Business helping business
Not all businesses benefited when the casinos came to Northwest Indiana. But Pollak said any negative effect the casinos would have on other local businesses happened 20 years ago, when the casinos were new and shock value was fresh.
Dave Ryan, executive director of the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, agreed, pointing out that local restaurants are co-existing with the casinos today.
"Competition breeds success. The newness settled down, and restaurants in the area are doing pretty well," he said.
"Horseshoe had almost 4 million visitors last year. Even if only some of those people got out into the region it would help," Pollak said.
He said the places with a national draw -- such as the Indiana Dunes or 3 Floyds brewpub in Munster -- tend to benefit the most from the out-of-state casino guests.
The casinos themselves also help boost the local economy by being a consumer as well as a tourism draw.
Nita said the casino uses a lot of local vendors for decorations and centerpieces for special events, limousine services to transport guests to area hotels, landscapers, and especially food vendors.
White said Majestic also uses outside vendors for landscaping, food and other products and services.
White said 22 percent of Majestic's allowable expenditure for outside contracts is going to minority contractors, which is more than double the 10 percent it originally agreed upon with the state. The casino also agreed to spend 5 percent of its total allocation for goods and services at women-owned businesses.
Ryan said Horseshoe alone is spending more than $18 million a year on infrastructure improvements in Hammond, compared to the less than $1 million the city was spending in the past.
He said East Chicago has used its money from Ameristar Casino there to improve the lakefront.
These improvements, Ryan said, are attracting other businesses to the cities, which in turn bring more jobs. He cited Hoist Liftruck as an example, which said it will employ 500 people at its new East Chicago facility.
And then there's the amount spent on utilities at the casinos, which are almost always open, with the exception of an occasional snow storm, with thousands of slot machines operating.
"We're one of NIPSCO's top 10 players," Nita laughed.
"There's always going to be good and bad. But from an economic standpoint, Horseshoe has certainly helped Hammond," Ryan said.