Surprise Winter Crop: Video Gambling Parlors
By Randy Ludlow, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Feb. 17–UTICA, Ohio — With its brick-building Main Street and small-town feel, this Licking County village of 2,109 residents never has been known as an entertainment mecca.
Yet, in less than a month, a touch of Vegas glitz has emerged in the town better known for the simpler pleasures of Velvet Ice Cream’s Ye Olde Mill.
With lights and sounds evocative of casinos, two new parlors offer games of skill for believers — what doubters see as illegal games of chance.
The video machines, promising payouts to winners and swallowing the cash of losers, have proliferated in Licking County after being booted out of Muskingum County last year.
They’re popping up in convenience stores and in truck stops lining I-70 as the legality and future of games such as Tic Tac Fruit are debated in courts in Franklin County and elsewhere.
Some local authorities are adopting a wait-and-see approach toward the devices, denounced as constituting illegal gambling in a 2006 opinion by former Attorney General Jim Petro.
About 15 parlors, including one in the former Utica Deli on Main Street, now are operating in Licking County.
“My philosophy is, we’re kind of in a holding pattern until we have some compelling legal ruling from a court that has jurisdiction in this county,” said Newark law director Jim Sassen.
“If a court says they’re legal, play them, have a good time. If that court finds it illegal, we’ll shut them down and prosecute,” he said.
Newark is moving to collect licensing fees of $500 to $1,000, plus $250 per machine, from operators. The money will be used to train a police officer to detect illegal games and mon- itor the businesses. Heath may follow suit.
Utica is trying to figure out what to do. John Rodeniser, president of the Utica Village Council, doesn’t much care for the parlors, which he considers out of place.
“It’s not really something we want to see in town. It’s not really what we want to become,” he said. “We’re not entirely sure whether it’s legal or not. We’re trying to find out.”
Teri Paxson, co-owner of the recently opened Winners’ Depot along Rt. 62 in Utica, is a veteran of the debate over the games.
She and a partner opened the first two parlors in Licking County: Chances R in Newark and Player’s Choice in Marne.
She now has competition from other operators, who moved west to set up shop in Newark and Heath after being banished from Muskingum County.
“I’m on the right side of the law. They’re nothing but a PlayStation for adults, except you can get cash as a prize,” Paxson said.
“You have to think your way through the game … you have to have skill,” she said, noting that one experienced couple takes her for around $200 every time they play.
Many of the games involve picking and holding symbols in hopes of forming “lines” of winning matches. Winners collect their earnings from parlor employees, not the machines.
Paxson said she won’t tolerate Tic Tac Fruit machines. She considers them “bogus” machines that won’t pay out. She supports the Newark licensing fee and monitoring to “keep the cheaters out.”
The manufacturer of Tic Tac Fruit went to court in Franklin County after state liquor officials warned that the machines were illegal games of chance and would be seized from bars.
The court case is pending, with a judge forbidding seizure of the machines while blocking placement of any more.
Licking County, meanwhile, is becoming a players’ paradise.
A pair of Tic Tac Fruit machines greet those walking into the Sunoco on Rt. 161 in Jersey Township east of New Albany.
Manager Ed Zerri said a distributor proclaimed the machines “legal in Licking County” and struck a deal to give the station a cut of the earnings.
“They’re doing OK and improving,” he said of the patronage of the Jokers Wild and Super Sevens machines.
“The odds of winning on those machines are much better than the lottery,” he said.
rludlow@dispatch.com
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NYSE:SUN,