By JAMES FINK
jfink@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1611

With hints from Seneca Gaming Corp. that construction on the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino may resume this year, a local anti-casino gaming coalition has restarted its campaign against it.

On Tuesday, Citizens for a Better Buffalo had Niagara University Professor Steve Siegel address the Buffalo Common Council regarding his views that the casino would hurt, not help, the city. He warned that the permanent casino would "pose a formidable threat to any and all other hospitality operations in Western New York."

Citizens for a Better Buffalo is part of a larger group that filed a lawsuit in federal courts seeking to shut down Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino, which opened in 2007 on nine acres of sovereign Seneca Nation of Indians territory on South Park Avenue. The lawsuit is under review by U.S. Federal Court Judge William Skretny. The casino, which expanded last year, remains open.

The permanent casino, projected to cost $300 million, could create as many as 1,000 jobs, plus an equal number of construction-related jobs. Work on the casino stopped in 2008 because of economic concerns by Seneca Gaming Corp.

"What we rarely hear about is the devastating negative economic impact that research shows occurs when a tax-exempt casino is placed on what is claimed to be sovereign land within an urban setting," Siegel said.

Buffalo receives between $5 million and $7 million in annual slot machine revenues - equal to 1.2 percent of the city's total $451 million budget. By comparison, parking tickets generate $5.5 million in revenues for Buffalo.

"There exists hard data that should make it clear to our citizens and decision-makers that not only won't the casino deliver on its inflated claims, but it would serve as a huge, money-sucking vacuum, redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars from local businesses and putting far more people out of work than it can ever hope to employ in the casino," Siegel said.