NOT CONFUSING CARPS WITH CARP

COME , Cruise Ship Casino 2/2004 from the series CRUISE

all reproduction rights reserved Wm. Greiner

Harrah’s New Orleans, the largest casino in the city, is on pace for its best year ever: gambling revenue is up 13.6 percent through the first five months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2005, pre-Katrina.

The casinos in this region are generating more revenue — from significantly fewer players — in large part because of the extra money that many area residents have in their pockets and fewer alternatives on where to spend it, casino executives and others in the region say.

“It’s like a barroom,” said Ted Lewis, 48, a case manager at a New Orleans homeless shelter who started coming to Harrah’s only after the casino’s reopening in early 2006. “When times are bad, people come to release stress. They drink, they gamble.”

They do indeed. Boomtown New Orleans, for instance, a casino on the edge of the city that was not flooded, booked $83 million in profit last year, nearly triple its pre-Katrina best. Here in Biloxi, even with two fewer casinos operating through the first half of the year, gamblers lost $428.3 million in the first five months of the year, compared with $418.7 during the same period in 2005.

Locals now abound at the gambling centers. Gary W. Loveman, the chief executive of Harrah’s Entertainment, said that before Katrina, roughly three out of every four people gambling at his company’s New Orleans property was a tourist; today the majority are from the city or the surrounding area, including a number of construction workers drawn to the area and other temporary residents.

“With all the bowling alleys and social clubs and churches and favorite restaurants that aren’t there,” Mr. Loveman said, “we’re getting a much larger share of the discretionary spend.”

Excerpts from: Casinos Boom in Katrina’s Wake as Cash Pours In By GARY RIVLIN
Published: July 16, 2007 The New York Times