The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., The View From Here column: NOREEN: Get ready for new boom in Cripple Creek

Sat. November 08, 2008; Posted: 08:40 PM

Colorado voters approved Amendment 50 on Tuesday, meaning that in mid-2009 a gambling boom, or at least a boomlet, will commence in Cripple Creek.

Voters approved a 20-fold increase, from $5 to $100, but the casinos got more -- the ability to add roulette and craps and to remain open 24 hours a day. There still must be a municipal election in Cripple Creek to trigger all this, but consider that a slam dunk.

It'll be a slam dunk because of residents like Linda Wiedman, who has lived there more than 30 years and likes what casino gambling has done for the town.

"To me, it's growing," Wiedman said. "You used to have to go to Colorado Springs to work. Now they're coming up here to work."

The locals say Cripple Creek was a ghost town before 1990, when the initial gambling measure allowed casinos there and in Central City and Black Hawk.

"We had to do something," Wiedman continued. "Maybe gambling isn't the choice of some people, but they needed to do something and they did."

Tax records show that in 1992, the property tax bill for the Wiedmans' log house rose by 90 percent. Teller County Assessor Tom King said passage of Amendment 50 probably will drive property values up -- including residential properties.

"It happened before and it's going to happen again," King said. "But I would think Central City will feel it more than we will."

That's because Central City is the closest gambling town to Denver, a much bigger market.

Kynta Leonard, who has owned Maudie's Antiques in the center of casino row on Bennett Avenue for 35 years, has mixed feeling about what gambling has done for Cripple Creek. In the 1990s, she transformed her business into the Silver Mine Casino, but decided to quit because "it's not my lifestyle."

Leonard, who said she fields a few offers for her building every year, thinks Cripple Creek lost some of its charm because of casinos, but as long as gambling is there, she said, they might as well increase the bet limit.

"A real gambler is not going to come to a $5 bet limit place," she said. "We get poor people who shouldn't be gambling."

Century Casinos, which owns Womacks in Cripple Creek, trumpeted the election result on its Web site, but there are some unknowns and Amendment 50 won't guarantee long-term success.

As gambling matured in Cripple Creek in the 1990s, some casinos failed. There are 16 operating now, after last month's failure of the Wild Horse Casino.

With a 20-fold increase in the bet limit, a different kind of gambler will come to town, but it remains to be seen how many and how many casinos they will support.

Eventually, Cripple Creek gambling will find a new equilibrium, as all markets do.

Pikes Peak or bust?

Gamblers go to Cripple Creek for the same reason the miners did -- to get rich quick.

And the success rate for the gamblers is similar to what the miners experienced -- most have left town busted.

The only consistent winners are the casinos and Cripple Creek residents like Wiedman, who prefers seeing the town a vibrant place steeped in history instead of a broken-down ghost town.

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Contact Noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears Fridays on KOAA Channels 5/30 at noon and on KRDO Radio Channels 105.5 FM and 1240 AM at 6:40 a.m.

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