I actually agree with Bart Blatstein about something:
Would more parking spaces than the 1,700 currently contained in onsite garages be provided?
They would not. “We are in a city,” Blatstein said. “You want to encourage public transportation and not cars.”
I don’t think the overall proposal, for a second casino downtown, is a good idea. Actually I think its a terrible idea. We’ve already got one, you see (in an outrageous French accent) and it’s struggling to get by. Blatstein’s idea that his casino will be so fucking awesome that it will attract all the Richie Richs that want ever so badly to gamble but don’t want to go to Sugarhouse because Sugarhouse attracts the blahs is just not believable on its face, and is pretty absurd as a business plan.
How could he be so confident The Provence would attract a high-end clientele that can afford to gamble, and not a less-well-off clientele that cannot?
“We’ll get our target market because we don’t have any competition,” Blatstein said.
The upscale Atlantic City casinos, such as the Borgata, don’t attract the thousands of wealthy Philadelphia-area fun-seekers who won’t travel to the shore just for dinner and a show, Blatstein said. He said that nobody in his target market is visiting Sugarhouse or other regional casinos, but that his proposal would be fantastic enough to attract them.
Atlantic City just tried this exact idea with Revel, and it has thus far been a miserable failure.
But hey, at least he recognizes that adding surface parking downtown is pretty dumb, so there’s that.
520 Chestnut 
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