"I had a good friend from college who was a life coach, I don’t know if you have friends from school who are life coaches, but life coaching... When I got really unhappy with my sorta lot in real estate development. Developers, y’know, real estate development is up and down, it’s cyclical, so... I talked to my friend over in New Jersey and said, y’know why are you so happy? He said oh, I’m a life coach. Y’know, you talk to them about why you’re unhappy, and he asked me some questions. He said what did you like most about your career? At that point I was probably working for twenty-five plus years. And I said well, y’know, I probably should have retired by now, doing something else, have a second career. And he said okay, let’s talk about second career. And for me, he said when were you happiest? And I enjoyed government. The ten years I spent in government in Allentown, I really enjoyed. I felt kinda fulfilled by being in a public service position. He said well maybe you should think about going back into government. I said at my age, well, I dunno. People sorta think government for the young not for the old."
"I never ask people to roll over, but I think what people will find in Bethlehem is that I think we’re much more sensitive to developers, and we work well with them, we understand it, we have this symbiotic relationship. It isn’t adversarial, it never should be. When seventy-five percent of your budget comes from real estate tax, you better develop real estate. Y’know, because you have to grow. You have to grow your economy in a lot of ways, you have to grow jobs, uh, and they only way to grow jobs is to basically let developers do what they have to do. Which is build buildings, build factories... So I think we’ve been able to build on our past, which is never not looked back on. Preservation is in my blood, and especially with Historic Bethlehem, having a sensitivity to the history of the city. We’ve been able to preserve the past, and y’know, build the future.Sounds like a bad slogan for a mayor running for office, but we have been able to do that."
"If it would have been developed as an integrated resort, shopping and y’know, sort of casino resort was supposed to have been developed in the original development plan, which was a hotel and a multi-purpose space for meetings, conventions, conferences and retail and gaming, because what they had hoped was that about fifty percent of that revenue was gonna come from gaming and about fifty percent was gonna come from non-gaming sources. And now it’s all coming from gaming, a little bit from Emeril’s and some of the restaurants, but quite frankly it’s been supported by the gaming function. That’s putting all your eggs in one basket, but that hasn’t been what made Las Vegas Sands successful when they were successful, and their stock prices may be telling a different story, but everybody in the gaming business’ stock prices are telling the same story. It’s been that the economy’s been hurting. And gaming is very discretionary, other than the first comment you made about some people saying I want to take my money and control my destiny – that’s one of the reasons casinos are able to sort of stay afloat.
And even despite the way the current economy is... if there were no casinos, there would be an underworld that was creating it. It’s... the public’s need to try to control their own destiny as far as improving their lot economically will make the need for illegal numbers, uh maybe the lottery business would be better in terms of state run lotteries. But people feel somehow that they’re in control when they walk into a room full of slot machines. They put twenty dollars in it and hope that it becomes three-thousand."
"We didn’t see gambling as the end, we saw gambling as the beginning. We saw gambling as the engine or the fuel that would keep the engine running. We knew from the failed ten years of working with Steel, that this project was so massive. The public wanted us to save the blast furnaces, try to save as many of the historic buildings as possible, cuz everybody’s vision of Bethlehem Steel is what you see there now. And they wanted to save all that, and Steel said oh we’ll do all that. And they tried. Ten years, and they couldn’t. So we knew that if we didn’t do something, if we didn’t get gambling, if we didn’t get gaming there, that there would be no engine large enough to cover. To solve the equation. That was a very calculated risk on the mayor’s part and certainly my part and others who supported gaming right from day one. We knew that without the kind of energy and without the revenues that we were gonna be able to get out of gaming, it wouldn’t happen. So it was kind of a Faustian bargain on our part. Y’know, a little bit. You sorta say ehh yeah, but we’ll control you. And we did that. And there’s always the unhappy ending to Dr. Faustus, but I don’t think we’re gonna have that here. I just said Faustian bargain purely from a literary standpoint. I think it was something we had to do. I don’t think we had a choice."
- Tony Hanna
+++
"You may as well go jump off a building."
-Jack, referring to the city's attempt to fiscally control the Sands Casino.
"I never ask people to roll over, but I think what people will find in Bethlehem is that I think we’re much more sensitive to developers, and we work well with them, we understand it, we have this symbiotic relationship. It isn’t adversarial, it never should be. When seventy-five percent of your budget comes from real estate tax, you better develop real estate. Y’know, because you have to grow. You have to grow your economy in a lot of ways, you have to grow jobs, uh, and they only way to grow jobs is to basically let developers do what they have to do. Which is build buildings, build factories... So I think we’ve been able to build on our past, which is never not looked back on. Preservation is in my blood, and especially with Historic Bethlehem, having a sensitivity to the history of the city. We’ve been able to preserve the past, and y’know, build the future.Sounds like a bad slogan for a mayor running for office, but we have been able to do that."
"If it would have been developed as an integrated resort, shopping and y’know, sort of casino resort was supposed to have been developed in the original development plan, which was a hotel and a multi-purpose space for meetings, conventions, conferences and retail and gaming, because what they had hoped was that about fifty percent of that revenue was gonna come from gaming and about fifty percent was gonna come from non-gaming sources. And now it’s all coming from gaming, a little bit from Emeril’s and some of the restaurants, but quite frankly it’s been supported by the gaming function. That’s putting all your eggs in one basket, but that hasn’t been what made Las Vegas Sands successful when they were successful, and their stock prices may be telling a different story, but everybody in the gaming business’ stock prices are telling the same story. It’s been that the economy’s been hurting. And gaming is very discretionary, other than the first comment you made about some people saying I want to take my money and control my destiny – that’s one of the reasons casinos are able to sort of stay afloat.
And even despite the way the current economy is... if there were no casinos, there would be an underworld that was creating it. It’s... the public’s need to try to control their own destiny as far as improving their lot economically will make the need for illegal numbers, uh maybe the lottery business would be better in terms of state run lotteries. But people feel somehow that they’re in control when they walk into a room full of slot machines. They put twenty dollars in it and hope that it becomes three-thousand."
"We didn’t see gambling as the end, we saw gambling as the beginning. We saw gambling as the engine or the fuel that would keep the engine running. We knew from the failed ten years of working with Steel, that this project was so massive. The public wanted us to save the blast furnaces, try to save as many of the historic buildings as possible, cuz everybody’s vision of Bethlehem Steel is what you see there now. And they wanted to save all that, and Steel said oh we’ll do all that. And they tried. Ten years, and they couldn’t. So we knew that if we didn’t do something, if we didn’t get gambling, if we didn’t get gaming there, that there would be no engine large enough to cover. To solve the equation. That was a very calculated risk on the mayor’s part and certainly my part and others who supported gaming right from day one. We knew that without the kind of energy and without the revenues that we were gonna be able to get out of gaming, it wouldn’t happen. So it was kind of a Faustian bargain on our part. Y’know, a little bit. You sorta say ehh yeah, but we’ll control you. And we did that. And there’s always the unhappy ending to Dr. Faustus, but I don’t think we’re gonna have that here. I just said Faustian bargain purely from a literary standpoint. I think it was something we had to do. I don’t think we had a choice."
- Tony Hanna
+++
"You may as well go jump off a building."
-Jack, referring to the city's attempt to fiscally control the Sands Casino.
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