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Resurrecting Butte

Two entrepreneurs are pitching a plan they say will bring life to a dying city with a Vegas-style return to its rowdy roots

By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

The richest hill on earth gave up $2.5 billion worth of metal in its day – it’d be worth approximately $30 billion at today’s prices – and turned a mining camp into a rollicking city of 100,000 people. At its height, illegal gambling and prostitution openly flourished in rowdy Butte, and bars closed the blinds and kept serving booze long past the 2 a.m. closing time, sometimes round-the-clock as thirsty miners came off their shifts.

But the last mine shut down in 2000, and Butte had already begun dying a painfully slow death long before that. It has 70,000 fewer people than in its heyday, and its historic uptown district is a checkerboard of abandoned buildings and sometimes struggling businesses.

Still, this is a special place, absolutely unlike any other city in the state, maybe even the nation. It means something to be from Butte, which seemingly has survived the death of its mining industry on stubbornness and pride as much as anything.

Now, the town sees the potential payoff for hanging on. Ironically enough, the latest idea for the salvation of Butte is something of a return to the city’s rambunctious roots.

Two out-of-state entrepreneurs named Barrett Singer and Robert Tormey – folks here who’ve never met them personally now refer to them as "Barry" and "Bob" – came to Butte with the idea of selling Montana beef to China.

But they saw something else when they got here. They say it’s the intersecting interstate highways, the 9,000-foot runway in town capable of handling 747s, the unique character and architecture of the uptown district, and the fact that lots of property sits unused and can probably be bought.

They say the idea they hatched was to turn uptown Butte into the next Branson, Mo. Branson, a little town of 6,000 that sits well off the beaten path in the Ozarks, has put up more than 30 music halls and theaters, lured some stars from yesteryear – Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, Charley Pride, John Davidson, Jimmy Osmond – and attracts 6 million visitors annually who don’t give two hoots about Britney Spears or Eminem.

They say they took the idea – and they’re talking 40 music halls and theaters with a total of 60,000 seats, not to mention sports facilities – to unnamed investors back East who said they liked the idea, but felt the plan was too risky. They say the investors had an idea that would take much of the risk out of it, and that’s how gambling got into the mix of a project they’re calling "Destination: Montana."

We’re talking full-blown, no-limit, Vegas-style, 24-hour-a-day gambling and drinking. The hang-up: It’s against the law. That never stopped Butte before, but that was a different day and age. This time it’ll take an act of the Montana Legislature, and the governor’s approval, to bend the rules for Butte.

But the investors are talking about dropping as much as $1.8 billion in Butte in construction alone, creating as many as 10,000 construction jobs during the massive project’s three-year completion cycle – they put the total amount of construction at 12 million square feet, including thousands more hotel rooms – and 8,400 permanent jobs when it’s done.

"It’s really unbelievable, when you look at the actual scope of the thing," says state Sen. Dan Harrington, D-Butte.

"There aren’t any other developers coming into Montana willing to invest $1.5 billion in the economy," says state Rep. Brad Newman, D-Butte. "That’s billion, with a ‘b.’ We need to take this seriously."

The Butte delegation is behind the plan 100 percent. So is virtually every politician in Butte-Silver Bow County.

So, for that matter, is pretty much every person in Butte. Unlike Missoula, where citizens can’t seem to agree on which day of the week it is, unscientific local polls conducted by various media in Butte show support for the creation of an "entertainment district" running at 90 percent or better.

"The only ones against it," says a customer in the nearby M&M Bar, "have already taken their money out of this town."

"I heard the governor said today she’d veto anything that extended gambling rights to the tribes," says another fellow, passing on what turned out to be an unfounded rumor. "She’d better hire more bodyguards if she screws us on this. They might as well bulldoze the whole town into the pit if this doesn’t go through."

"What the hell," says Ervin Niemi, who lives in the area earmarked for construction of 10 to 11 full-scale casinos near the Berkeley Pit. "We ain’t got nothin’ to lose. Fact is, I can’t see how we could lose, if those guys are willing to put that kind of money into this town. If I had that kind of dough I’d keep it in a bucket, but if they’re willing to throw in better than a billion and a half, they must have an idea it’s going to work."

Niemi got out of the service in 1952, and was on his way to Alaska when he stopped in Butte. He landed in the Helsinki Bar near the mines, met a girl who lived across the street, and … well, Niemi never made it to Alaska. He ended up marrying the girl and buying the bar.

Back then, the Helsinki was the first of three bars in a row on its block alone and one of 30 in the immediate area.

"Miners were at work, there was a lot of payroll and people were running all over the place," Niemi recalls.

Today the Helsinki sits locked up tight, the only building left standing on the block. It’s this area, with the Berkeley Pit to one side, and Butte’s fabled uptown on the other, where Singer and Tormey want the Legislature to OK from 100 to 320 acres for an "entertainment district" where wide-open gambling would be allowed.

Once a neighborhood with 1,000 homes, apartments, boarding houses and businesses, today only about 100 structures remain scattered in the weeds, many of them abandoned, many of those falling down.

A handful of people still live smack dab in the middle of what would become home to the 10 or 11 casinos. The possibility of an 11th came up late last week, when developers offered Montana’s Indian tribes a chance to own a casino in Butte in exchange for agreeing to forgo open gambling on their reservations. Federal law says the tribes must be extended the same gambling rights states give anyone else, and that’s been a major obstacle in Helena.

Donald Coldiron, a U.S. Postal worker, turned an old rooming house in this part of town into his home, where a cardboard Sean Connery stands guard in a second-story window. Coldiron has remodeled the inside, put on a new roof, replaced the contaminated soil in his yard. He’s new siding and a new porch away from being finished with the structure he’s lived in for eight years, and owned for five, where he enjoys an unobstructed panorama of all of Butte.

"I love my view," he says. "We can sit up on the second-floor balcony and watch the lightning storms pass across the valley. Plus," he adds, looking at the vacant lots around him, "I love my neighbors."

So the prospect of being displaced by casinos?

"I’d move out tomorrow," he says. "They can buy me out and bulldoze it down." He shrugs.

"We need something," he explains. "The economy here needs help, bad."

But Coldiron isn’t holding his breath. "This is the third time I’ve heard they’re going to do something up here. First it was the Butte Gardens (to replace the legendary Columbia Gardens that were gobbled up by the Berkeley Pit). Then Butte Central was going to put in a track and a gym. I’ll believe this when I see it."

Butte has been burned in the past as it sought to bolster its economy by luring new business. It courted a technology firm and a frozen food manufacturer, offering all kinds of tax breaks and incentives, but they used Butte’s generosity to land sweeter deals elsewhere. It did bring in a canola plant, only to see it close up within two or three years.

Meantime, the largest private employer in town – Montana Power – sold off its assets to out-of-staters just before electricity prices shot through the roof, renamed itself Touch America and invested in telecommunications just as that industry fell into a near-death spiral.

What people here like is that Singer, a 55-year-old Florida developer, and Tormey, 76, an Ohio businessman, came to them.

"They haven’t asked for anything," says Evan Barrett, executive director of the Butte Local Development Corp. "They haven’t asked for tax breaks, they haven’t asked for special land deals, they haven’t asked for grants, they haven’t asked for low-interest loans."

They have, of course, asked for legislation to legalize wide-open gambling (only sports betting would remain outlawed), albeit on a chunk of land that is one-third of one 1,000th of one percent of the state. And they’ve asked Montana’s Indian tribes to forfeit their right to follow suit in exchange for one casino.

"They’ve already spent a ton of their own money to move this project forward," Barrett says. The developers reportedly have spent $500,000 securing options on properties in and around Butte, and tying up several liquor licenses.

The bill that would allow all this has yet to be introduced, although the developers persuaded a Republican, Rep. John Witt of Carter, to put his name on the legislation before it’s taken up by the GOP-controlled House and Senate. Butte’s delegation is entirely Democratic.

"The bill is tightly drafted," says Newman, the state representative. "It’d be a dirty business if the only thing we ended up with was gambling."

Instead, Newman says, safeguards are built in.

The developers would have to write some $50 million in checks to state and local governments up front, impact fees to help government deal with the fallout from a project of this size (for one thing, the state, which currently runs herd on a gambling industry made up of video keno and poker machines with $2 betting maximums and $800 payouts, would have to be able to regulate Vegas-style games, wagers and payouts in Butte).

Promoters would have to secure all their building permits before starting construction.

To make sure the grandiose plans – which also call for the music halls, golf courses, a 10,000- to 15,000-seat stadium and athletic training facilities to lure professional teams and athletes for training in Butte’s mile-high air – don’t dissolve into a handful of casinos, the bill caps the number of casinos that could be built and their square footage (a total of 500,000 square feet for the original proposal of 10), but places minimum numbers on other aspects of the plan.

The developers have talked about 40 music halls and theaters – some of which would probably spill out of the gambling zone and into the historic uptown district – and the law would require them to build at least 20 of those. They’ve talked about constructing three PGA golf courses down in the flats; the law would require at least one of those actually comes to pass.

And they must present a $1 billion line of credit before getting started.

If any of that fails to happen, they don’t get the wide-open gambling.

"We don’t want gaming without the rest," Newman says.

"It’s a substantial project that’ll either be done right, or not done at all," says Barrett.

That also means they’re not talking Caesar’s Palace. The architecture of the casinos would match buildings in the historic uptown district. "When we’re finished, it’ll look like a Currier and Ives postcard up there," Singer promised at a public meeting at Montana Tech that drew a standing-room only and highly enthusiastic crowd of 500, left 150 more people standing in the lobby and turned away as many as 300 more at the door.

"They’re not throwing up a Quonset hut and putting in some gambling machines," Barrett adds.

The gambling has taken center stage because the financing hinges on it, and it requires the Legislature to act. But the developers insist that the Branson model and music remain at the front of their plans.

"That’s really the centerpiece," Barrett says. "The gaming’s necessary to make it finance-able."

The halls and theaters would feature musical acts from the 1960s and ’70s. The only entertainer’s name to surface so far has been Carly Simon, and it’s unclear who brought her up and whether she’s on board, or being mentioned as an example of the type of singer they hope to attract.

The developers say they’ve talked to entertainers, but – as with their investors – won’t divulge names unless the state gives the go-ahead.

"Like everybody else," Barrett says, "they’re waiting to see if it jells. The Legislature triggers everything."

News reports have talked about facilities that could attract National Football League and National Basketball Association teams to train at Butte’s altitude, but Barrett says the scope shouldn’t be limited to the NFL and NBA.

"We’re talking professional sports, collegiate athletes, Olympic-level training – I mean, it could be equestrian teams – there is no narrow focus," Barrett says. "We’ve got Levi Leipheimer from Butte who finished ninth in the Tour de France, and he’s talked about how the high altitude of Butte served him well in his training. We’ve already got the speed-skating facility … this is just broadening the concept."

The three golf courses, he says, are an ad-on meant to attract golfing groups that spend several days in one area playing different layouts. Coupled with the Jack Nicklaus-designed Old Works Course in Anaconda, Barrett says it’s one more way to lure a critical mass to Butte.

"Do they know how long the golf season is in Butte?" asks a fellow at the Met Tavern, which sits down in the flats of Butte, near the Civic Center.

"I can’t see people coming when it’s 32 below zero," adds J.P. Gordon, an engineer with NorthWestern Energy.

"If you’re sitting in, say, Georgia, and you decide you’re going to take a skiing and gambling vacation, where are you going to go?" asks another man. "I’m thinking they’ll head to Lake Tahoe before they’ll come to Butte."

The farther you get from uptown, the more skeptical people are of Destination: Montana.

But to a person, they still think it’s worth the try.

"We’ll just keep on dying" if the legislation isn’t passed, says Gordon.

"We’ll end up a ghost town," says Butte native Bill Dunmire. "Or at least the size of Dillon."

"We’ve been shrinking for over 80 years," says Barrett. "This state, the whole country, is full of Butte people who had to leave."

"Butte’s got real problems," says Harrington, the state senator. "Touch America’s very tentative and NorthWestern Energy’s got serious problems. We need something. To people who complain that it’s gambling, I say, ‘Well, we already have gambling.’ "

Proponents also point out that the developers predict the financially strapped state would realize $376 million more in tax revenue come 2006, when construction would be finished and Destination: Montana would be up and running. They’re suggesting a $2.50 tax on all tickets sold to the music halls, a 1 percent hotel room tax in the area, and a 3 percent tax on gaming.

"This is my second term in the Legislature, and this is the worst," says Rep. Jim Keane, D-Butte. "I’d love to come back here and have several hundred million more in the budget to work with. This has a big impact on everybody. This isn’t just for Butte. It’s for the whole state of Montana."

It does come at a cost.

"Caution would be the word; it’s a huge change," Jim Lindberg, an assistant for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Denver, told reporter Leslie McCartney of the Montana Standard. "It completely transforms a community into a gambling community. People shouldn’t have any illusions about that."

So would the Butte, America, we all know and many of us love, cease to exist?

"I’m a prosecutor in real life," Newman says, "and there’s no question there would be an increased workload. There are a lot of social problems that come with gambling. But people need to look at the big picture. Butte needs the jobs, and Montana needs the money."

" ‘Character’ is pretty hard to eat," says Erv Niemi, the retired owner of the Helsinki. "I’m 72. It don’t mean nothin’ to me. But for the younger generation, this might be a way they can stay in Butte."

"It’s pretty tough to beat the character out of Butte," says J.P. Gordon.

"In my life I’ve seen a lot in Butte," says Harrington. "I remember when there were 12,000 men in the mines, and nobody works there today. There have been huge changes, but Butte is still the city that it is.

"Butte will always be Butte."

Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 523-5260 or at [email protected].

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