Stories

The Boston Globe

February 26, 2006

By Keith O'Brien
Globe Correspondent

BILOXI, Miss. -- The storm heaved the huge casino barges across Beach Boulevard and months later they are still there: hulking reminders of what used to be on the Gulf Coast. People seeing them for the first time stop and take pictures of the barges, once awash in neon and now bound for a scrap-metal future. Then they climb back into their cars and drive away. There are ghosts on these beaches.

But look again, past the strange, landlocked vessels and the miles of empty waterfront. There are outposts on the horizon and inside those outposts there is hope. And alongside hope, lots of action. Three casinos are open in Biloxi and on weekends it takes a shoehorn to slip into a spot at a card table.

The Gulf Coast has not rebounded from Hurricane Katrina's blows. It had 12 casinos before the storm made landfall in August and a 13th was about to open. But the coast is on its way to recovery. As it turns out, it was holding the ace card all along. Now, perhaps more than ever, people want to gamble.

"The numbers have been off the charts," said Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission. "I was absolutely in shock when I saw the numbers. It was absolutely amazing."

Gaming in Mississippi is typically a $2.8 billion industry, and even with 12 of its 30 casinos out of commission for nearly four months after the storm, gaming revenues still topped $2.4 billion last year. Inland casinos that were spared actually saw double-digit percentage increases in revenue in the last quarter of 2005. Then came what Gregory called the real shocker.

The three casinos that opened in Biloxi the IP Hotel & Casino on Dec. 22, the Isle of Capri on Dec. 26, and the Palace Casino Resort on Dec. 30 took in $14.5 million by year's end, more than seven times what the entire Gulf Coast casino industry typically makes in a week.

This trend is not limited to Mississippi. Since Katrina, Louisiana gaming revenues are also up. There, riverboat casinos took in a single-month record $177 million in December. Why this is, no one can say for sure. What is clear is that the Gulf Coast is doubling down on its gaming industry as it looks to rebuild its shattered shoreline.

"What are we going to become?" said George Conwill, chief financial officer of the Palace. "I guess that's up to us and how we rebuild. The good news is, we don't have anything to tear down. That was done by God."

In 1992, before casinos floated into Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis, local restaurateur Bobby Mahoney called Biloxi "a lonely lady in waiting." The coast had been hit hard by Hurricane Camille in 1969, a storm that killed 259 people, and it took another, man-made blow when Interstate 10 opened in the 1970s. Travelers could now bypass these beachside towns. The lonely lady grew lonelier.

The casinos changed all that. This was no Las Vegas, not in size or in grandeur. But at night Biloxi sparkled. Tourists came roughly 21 million visits annually, according to tourism officials and so did plenty of B-list musicians. Meat Loaf, Peter Frampton, and Jethro Tull were all set to play the Gulf Coast last year.

This was, as some called it, the Redneck Riviera, and many loved it. Even Bay St. Louis, a quaint weekend destination 30 miles west of Biloxi, benefited from the casinos. They brought people and money, two things that local leaders sought to bring back post-Katrina.

Governor Haley Barbour signed a law in October allowing casinos to build on land, a change that would help get them running quickly. The Isle of Capri and the Palace, which lost their barges in the storm, immediately began converting hotel space into rooms for tables and slots.

Meeting rooms at the Isle became rows of slot machines, the sales office, a poker room. Bill Kilduff, the Isle's general manager, said ownership wanted people to forget their troubles when they walked through the door of the new, evolving facility. Upon seeing it reopen, some wept. Meanwhile, three miles away at the IP Hotel & Casino, Jon Lucas, president and general manager, wasn't happy just to reopen. He wanted to expand.

"As you can see," Lucas said recently, "we're very busy."

He looked out across the blackjack tables and the slot machines, the cocktail waitresses with low-cut tops and the guests ordering drinks. Pat Hanks, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., was playing the $1 slots. Jim Brooks, a Mobile, Ala., lawyer, was winning hand after hand at the blackjack tables, and Brenda Walker, from nearby Gulfport, couldn't get enough video poker.

Lately, Walker admitted, she and her husband, Bob, are coming to the casinos almost every day. It's a way to forget and be normal at least for a while. There are no clocks inside, no windows. But sooner or later, they all will leave, driving through a city of trailers to a home that may not exist anymore.

In Bay St. Louis, Everett Mitchell is living in a tent where his home used to be and Charles Gray across the street in a trailer. Parked out front, there is a Rolls-Royce, one of Gray's few possessions to escape the storm, and he counts himself lucky to have it. Others have much less.

J.D. Wilson, a security officer at the Isle of Capri, is happy just to have a job. "I ain't broke down and cried yet," he said. But he suspects that time for tears is coming soon, maybe sometime this spring, when he finishes rebuilding his flooded home, just in time for hurricane season, the biggest gamble of all.

"I'm dreading June," Wilson said. "I'm not looking forward to the next hurricane season. They say it's supposed to be as bad as the last one. I'm afraid I'll have to start all over again or have nothing to come back to. I've been through Camille. I've been through this one. I don't want to go through another. Too much misery. Too much death."

Contact Keith O'Brien, a freelance writer living in Boston, at keith@keithob.com.