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Paragon Gaming's Scott Menke on the site of his planned 'destination casino' in Vancouver.

UPDATE: On April 19, 2011, Vancouver City Council unanimously rejected the province’s $450-million plan to bring Vegas-style gambling to Vancouver. The vote throws the 780,000-square-foot gaming and entertainment project into question, though the city did leave the door open for development, of some smaller magnitude, to occur on the BC Place site. Whether the casino operator, Paragon Gaming, and the thousands of expected gamblers will choose to stick with Vancouver is another matter, as writer Nick Rockel explained in this October 2010 feature.

In his black jacket and open-necked shirt, Scott Menke looks ready to play a little roulette, or maybe some Texas hold’em. One morning in late June, the president and co-founder of Las Vegas-based casino developer Paragon Gaming is sitting in the boardroom of his company’s downtown Vancouver office at Plaza of Nations. Menke has just flown in from Edmonton, where his company runs one of its three Canadian casinos. With the confidence of a croupier, he explains how Paragon plans to transform Vancouver into a global gambling destination.

Paragon owns the Edgewater Casino, an underwhelming 30,000-square-foot establishment at the far end of the plaza. But it recently won the right to build a Vegas-style hotel, casino and entertainment complex across the street from here, on a small plot of land next to provincially owned BC Place Stadium. The Edgewater – or rather, its precious gaming licence – will move to the new 780,000-square-foot development, which Paragon aims to finish by 2013.

With 150 tables and up to 1,500 slot machines, the casino portion of the still-unnamed, $450-million project will be more than three times bigger than the Edgewater. But Menke points out that it occupies just 14 per cent of the proposed complex, a branded property that will include two hotels with a combined 650 rooms, plus restaurants, shops, meeting spaces and spa and gym facilities. “Everybody says it’s a casino, but the casino is only 100,000 square feet out of 800,000,” notes the tall Arizona native.

Focus on destination tourism

Menke says the Paragon development is an opportunity to bring more visitors to Vancouver. Where 23 per cent of the Edgewater’s customers are from outside the Lower Mainland, Paragon projects that number will at least double at the new property, thanks to a mix of Canadian and international guests.

In other words, the joint won’t rely on Metro Vancouver residents to keep its baccarat tables and hotel rooms full. “We’ll continue to build our local base, but our focus is really on the destination tourism,” Menke says. “We absolutely believe that we’re going to be additive to the market, not competing with other hotels around here.”

Paragon’s Vancouver play is one more step in the expansion of the B.C. gambling industry, which may soon pour more money into provincial coffers than all corporate income taxes combined. Gambling – or gaming, to use the industry euphemism – is a lucrative business. But skeptics say the provincial government is hooked on the revenues it brings while overlooking the economic and social costs of problem gambling. To others, the idea that high rollers from Chicago and Shanghai will flock to a Vancouver casino is far-fetched. And if the province does view gambling as more than a money grab, it isn’t sharing its plan with the public.

Paragon is still in the process of seeking approval from the city to start construction. The company plans to apply for a development permit this fall after finishing a series of public hearings, and it hopes to break ground by next spring. So far Paragon appears to be in for a smoother ride than legendary U.S. casino builder Steve Wynn, who got run out of town in 1994 after proposing a similar development on the Vancouver waterfront. What’s changed since then? “Gaming is more mainstream,” Menke says. “And the facilities are much more approachable because people look at them as not only a casino.”

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Big downtown casinos are not limited to major international gambling destinations such as Las Vegas, Macau and Monaco. You can find them in Australia – where the rule is one for each major centre – Singapore and South Africa, and in U.S. cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans. In Canada Halifax and Montreal also have large casinos in or near downtown.

Menke, 45, is no amateur at mixing casinos with hotels. At Circus Circus Enterprises in the 1980s and ’90s, he led the development of properties including Las Vegas’s Excalibur and Luxor for the company’s president, William Bennett. Since launching Paragon in 2000, Menke and his business partner Diana Bennett have assembled a small collection of casinos in Western Canada. (Bennett is Paragon’s CEO and William Bennett’s daughter, while Menke is his nephew.) Besides the Edgewater, they include the Eagle River Casino & Travel Plaza in Whitecourt, Alberta, and the River Cree Hotel and Resort near Edmonton. Both properties are located on First Nations reserves.

After buying the Edgewater in 2006 – the first such Canadian purchase by an American casino operator – Paragon began working with the city and the province to find a new home for its licence. “When we first started to meet with provincial officials, they clearly a long time ago set out on the path to leave slot boxes and move into destination casinos,” Menke recalls.

Casinos have become the province’s main gambling profit centre

In B.C. the term “destination casino” is a creature of the previous NDP administration. The NDP adopted it in the late ’90s after soliciting proposals for new casinos with hotel rooms, golf courses, entertainment and other attractions to lure out-of-town visitors. In 1999, the year after the B.C. Lottery Corp. (BCLC) became responsible for all commercial gambling, it granted approval in principle for eight such properties. Today the most prominent B.C. destination casino is Richmond’s River Rock Casino Resort, which opened in 2004.

Downtown Vancouver Map

But no matter what they call themselves, B.C.’s 17 casinos keep generating more money for the province. In fact – belying the BCLC’s name – casinos, not lotteries, have become the province’s main gambling profit centre. In the 2009 fiscal year, they accounted for $784 million or 69 per cent of the whopping $1.13 billion in net gambling revenues collected by Victoria (after expenses, including prize payouts). Compare that with fiscal 1999 when the government’s haul was a mere $532 million with less than half, or $242 million, coming from casinos. Thanks for that growth goes in no small part to a massive increase in slot machines, the mainstay of most casinos’ business: while the number of casinos in B.C. held steady between 1999 and 2009, the number of one-armed bandits quadrupled, from 2,360 to 9,438.

The province has championed Paragon's push for a destination casino in downtown Vancouver, although some observers questio

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