BOYD STILL COMMITTED TO BUILDING CASINO

Boyd Gaming Corporation Senior Vice President Maunty Collins has a message for Cape Girardeau: Out of sight doesn't translate into out of mind.

Collins said Thursday that even if there is no riverboat gambling vote to bring games of chance into Missouri casinos in the near future, Boyd Gaming will proceed with its original plan for a floating casino in Cape Girardeau.

"If the Amendment 3 referendum on gambling had passed in the April election, people in Cape Girardeau would probably be wondering why there aren't any bulldozers at the casino site," said Collins.

"We haven't been very visible in the last three weeks, but we haven't changed plans just because it didn't pass," said Collins. "There are enough places in the country that operate only with games of skill that we can tell it would still work in Cape Girardeau.

"Obviously we would like to have both the tables and slot machines, but we are confident we could survive with just the tables."

Amendment 3 was rejected in the April 5 election by 1,261 votes out of more than 1 million ballots cast. Asked if he thought the issue would be put back on the ballot in the near future, Collins replied,"I really can't speculate on something like that. Of course with such a close margin of failure, we would like to see it put back for another vote. But we have to go about our business whether it does or not," he said.

Collins said the Boyd group expects to name a general contractor soon.

"I wish I could give an exact date on that, but I can't because negotiations are still going on," said Collins, who is in Mississippi working toward a May 23 opening of a casino in Tunica. Boyd Gaming also will open a casino in Philadelphia, Miss., in July.

"We have had meetings with an engineer and architect for the Cape Girardeau project, and that is going along very well," he added.

"We are very busy with the opening of the two casinos in Mississippi, but that hasn't slowed down our work in Cape Girardeau very much," said Collins. "We just sent in the forms to the planning and zoning committee in Cape and have given the city manager Ronnie Fischer everything his office has asked for. All I can say is that we're right on schedule."

Fischer indicated he has not had a chance to sit down and work out the specifics of a timetable for construction, but is happy with what the Boyd Group has done thus far.

"Kent Bratton (city planner) and Ken Eftink (planning coordinator) are working on one piece of property that needs to be rezoned and another area requires a special use permit, but the Boyds have done everything we have asked," said Fischer.

"There still has to be a traffic impact study and a review of on-site construction," he added. "The Boyd group has submitted the proposal, and I anticipate that the contract will come out in the next two weeks or so. They have also applied for a state license and need to have that approved. As far as we're concerned, though, they're moving along as planned."

Added Collins,"We made a commitment to Cape Girardeau a while back, and the city showed its faith in us. Boyd Gaming intends to stick to that commitment. The city has treated us very well from the beginning, and we haven't forgotten that."

The city council voted 5-1 in March to endorse Boyd Gaming's riverboat casino development over a competing proposal by Lady Luck Gaming Corp.

A plan proposed recently by the Missouri House of Representatives would give voters another chance to say if they want games of chance on the riverboats on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

The Ways and Means committee voted 12-8 to send Speaker Bob Griffin's proposed constitutional amendment to the House floor. The plan was expected to come up for debate on Wednesday or Thursday.

Griffin's proposal is nearly identical to Amendment 3, which failed in 101 of the 114 counties, and by particularly large margins in rural areas of the state.