BOYD IN TOWN AS GAMING CAMPAIGN HEADS TO STRETCH

When Cape Girardeau voters go to the polls Tuesday, they'll decide for the second time in five months whether to allow riverboat gambling in the city.

That's all the proposition asks them to do. They aren't being asked to approve the $37.5 million proposal by the Las Vegas-based Boyd Gaming Corp. to build a gambling enterprise on the city's waterfront. But that prospect no doubt will be in the back of many voters' minds.

If gambling is ushered in, the Cape Girardeau City Council and ultimately the State Gaming Commission will decide which company is the vendor.

The Boyd company may not be the only one interested in locating in Cape Girardeau if gambling is OKed, but it is the only one to have discussed its plans publicly.

The Boyd proposal, first unveiled last May, is to build a $15 million land-based complex at the foot of Broadway. The "Victorian-style" development would include company offices, restaurants and retail offices in addition to a 900-space surface parking lot and an 800-space parking garage.

The plan calls for the city to be home to a $13.5 million triple-decker riverboat 254 feet long and 78 feet wide.

It would resemble 19th-century riverboats and carry 1,350 passengers, according to company officials.

The company said it will spend $6 million on gaming equipment and $3 million on other expenditures.

All these elements are still in place for this second go-round, according to company president William Boyd, who was in town Thursday.

In fact, another $500,000 has been added to the proposal to account for higher-than-expected engineering costs of going over the railroad tracks.

The company spent $163,000 on the losing cause in the June election, and after months of silence on the issue jumped back into the latest campaign earlier this month.

Boyd, who dined with a group of university students Thursday night, described the campaign as "straightforward and honest."

This is the company's first experience with trying to convince a community to accept casino gambling. But it is no newcomer to gaming.

Started by Boyd and his father in 1975, it owns the Stardust, the Fremont, the California Hotel and Casino, and Sam's Town Hotel and Gambling Hall in Las Vegas, and is at work on opening a riverboat casino in Tunica, Miss., and a casino on the Choctaw Indian reservation in Philadelphia, Miss.

The company, which has $160 million in stockholder equity, went public on Oct. 15. "It makes it much easier to expand into jurisdictions outside Nevada," Boyd explained.

He acknowledges that other companies probably will be interested if the voters say yes to gambling, but his company has carried the ball in the campaign for good reasons.

"Hopefully we have developed a relationship with the city," he said, "with the people of the city as well as the city council. And that we would be a little further along than other companies."

He called Cape Girardeau "our kind of place. It's a great place to do business, we think."

The feeling that other companies are keeping an eye on Tuesday's vote was underscored at a recent city council meeting. David Murphy, executive director of the Colonial Cape Girardeau Foundation, asked the council to take a position against selling St. Vincent's Seminary to a gambling company.

The foundation wants to buy the seminary to turn it into a Civil War interpretive center.

Murphy said he was responding to a report "from a pretty good source" that a gaming company has signed an option to buy the seminary.

Murphy said he does not know the name of the company said to be involved.

A spokesman for Thomas L. Meyer Real Estate, which has been handling the sale of the seminary for the Provincial Administration of the Vincentian Fathers, had no comment.

David Knight, a spokesman for the pro-gambling Yes Group, said his committee has heard the rumor and would oppose such a use for the seminary.

"It is in fact, we feel, an inappropriate use of a historic property that would be much better utilized as the museum housing the library of President U.S. Grant as proposed by the Colonial Cape Foundation," Knight said.

A company that might be knocking on the city council's door if gambling were approved is Reno-Nev.-based Summit Casinos.

An agent of a company representing Summit reportedly has met with past Chamber of Commerce President Robert Hendrix, and within the past 30 days arranged a meeting with City Manager J. Ronald Fischer. That meeting ultimately was canceled for an unknown reason, Fischer said.

Boyd was smiling Thursday. "We have enjoyed our experience in Cape Girardeau," he said. "The people here are the finest I've ever met. Regardless of the outcome, I will cherish this experience."