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Anne Arundel slots: Are they in or are they out?
The war of words between The Cordish Cos. and opponents of its Anne Arundel County casino came down to this on Wednesday — will the casino be in the Arundel Mills shopping mall, or at the mall?
Cordish’s opponents, including the Maryland Jockey Club and Penn National Gaming, have indicated in television ads the slot machines would actually be inside the mall. Lately, they’ve used a newspaper’s paraphrasing of a statement made by Larry Tom, Anne Arundel County director of planning and zoning, to say the casino and the mall will be connected.
(My blog post on Wednesday elicited an e-mail response within two hours from the Stop Slots group, asserting once more that the casino will be in the mall, and using the Gazette article as proof.)
Not so, said Tom in a Cordish press release sent to reporters Wednesday.
“The Maryland Live facility is a completely stand-alone structure which is physically separated from the mall,” Tom said in the statement. “To say that the Maryland Live facility is attached by virtue of this proposed pedestrian walkway would be like saying it is connected because two separate buildings share the same pavement, or the same air.”
Tom also called for the ad to be pulled “because it is so misleading.”
So, according to the county and Cordish, the answer is, they’re out.
Ad of course, depending on how that referendum goes Nov. 2, they could be out completely.
