John Callahan

John Callahan. I am the Director of Development for Peron Development. P-E-R-O-N. I am the former Mayor of the City of Bethlehem.

There was a lot of uncertainty about what the economic future of Bethlehem was, given the unknowns related to the Bethlehem Steel site. We had 20% of the taxable landmass of the city and a large water and sewer user completely offline for us. What was going to happen with those properties and that land was critically important for us to get it back onto the tax rolls, put it back to productive use. There was not a lot of in the way of a plan as to how to do that. I would characterize it as highly uncertain

The first question was: is gaming something that's appropriate for Bethlehem? And as I learned more about gaming and the process that the state put in place to award these licenses, it was pretty clear to me that the Lehigh Valley--given the fact that we're the third most populous region in the state, the fastest growing area in the state, and 10 miles from New Jersey to have the opportunity for folks from New Jersey to come here and bring some of their tax dollars with them when they gamed--it was very clear to me that the Lehigh Valley was going to get a license.

From that standpoint, it became less of a debate about whether the Valley or even Bethlehem should have gaming. Because once gaming's here, whether it's in Allentown or another city, those problems don't know municipal borders and boundaries. Those problems are going to come to the Lehigh Valley; they're going 00:02:00to come to the state. So my thinking was less about whether or not we would have one, but kind of collectively as a region determining where best to put one. Then individually for me as mayor, I had to think about where did I think the best site in Bethlehem was to host a gaming facility?

At some point there was another operator interested in putting one at the outskirts of the City, at the intersection of Route 412 and Route 78. And then one more interested in doing something that would be centered around historic preservation and more in town. It was a little bit more risky to do the one in town because if it went poorly, it was not something you can ignore out on the border. The negative impacts would be in the center of the community and something we have to deal with more directly. I think, you know in retrospect, it made all the sense in the world to have it in town where you can have all the 00:03:00other positive impacts of gaming and ancillary economic impact and investment.

I wanted to be clear to this community that we were strong and that we had a plan in place with or without a casino to get kind of where we were going. We would probably get there a different way, and maybe it would take us longer to get there, but this was us not clinging to the hopes of a casino saving the City of the future of the City. We're a good community, and we were going to be a strong community with or without a casino.

The flip side of that is I needed Bethlehem and the people here to have enough faith in who we were as a community. If we didn't get it, we're going to be fine. And if we get it, we're going to be fine. In essence, you know, we're not going to let this casino define who we are, and we're not going to become just a casino town, that we have more going on. We had to have faith that we could do 00:04:00both. I didn't want--if the sense was that all of our fortunes were tied to the success or failure of this application and then we didn't get it, that doesn't set yourself up very well for the future. I wanted people to understand that we were doing this from a position of strength, not a position of weakness. It was important for the overall psyche of the community and it happened to be true.

I think there was so much hyperbole or overemphasis on the negative impacts casinos were going to have. There was a whole discussion about prostitution and gambling addiction and this 'Bethlehem was going to become Sodom and Gomorrah,' 00:05:00you know. It was just kind of a lot of over-the-top rhetoric. Conversely, there were a lot of folks that were saying, 'if we just get this casino, everything's going to be great.' And that wasn't true either. It was these two points of view hashing it out in these meetings.

Part of what my job was to, I guess, temper expectations on either side. It wasn't going to be our savior, and it wasn't going to be the demise of Bethlehem, either. It was a part of the overall economic future and plan we had for the community. There was a lot of passion around it. I get it. I'm glad there was that passion. I think it was important to us as a community to let those voices be heard, both for and against. There needed to be a proper vetting so that, regardless of what direction we ended up in, that those that were 00:06:00against--once we made the decision to move forward with it--at least felt like they were heard and they weren't going to shut down and go in a different direction. It was kind of like, 'Okay, we had our chance to be heard. The decision was made by City Council and the Mayor to go in a different direction, but at least we had an opportunity to voice our concerns. So now that it's coming, we're not going to disengage. We're gonna stay involved, and we're still going to be involved in the community, making things happen.'

I mentioned that sometimes because these meetings went to 2-3 in the morning, Allentown, which was having that same dialogue and discussion, would have maybe five or six people show up in favor of it and the meetings were over rather quickly. There were moments when I look with some degree of envy at at their situation and go, 'Boy, we're really getting our brains beat in over here in Bethlehem, and this is really so controversial. Wouldn't it be nice to have a 00:07:00situation where these meetings were over by 10 o'clock.

Ultimately, I came around to the idea and the understanding that--and it's true of gaming or any other issue in Bethlehem--people really do have a stake in the ground. They really do feel a part of the community in, I think, a special way.

They care about it, so they're going to show up at a meeting and voice their concerns or how they feel the direction of the city should go. So I came around to the understanding and the belief that I'd much rather be the Mayor of a city where 500 people show up at a meeting than five because that shows that people care and they've got a lot of passion about their city.

Apathy is a hard thing to overcome, and so if you start with a community that's engaged and involved, and you give them an opportunity heard, generally good things are going to happen.

There was a moment when, in the course of these hearings, when my honors English teacher from 11th grade came. I've maintained a pretty close relationship with 00:08:00her since I had her in high school. She was like the cool teacher. She was the one everyone loved to hang out with, close to her students. We all liked her and respected her. Real smart woman and strong--a rugby player. She was just very cool.

So she showed up, and where the podium was and where the speakers were speaking and the table where I was sitting were pretty close to one another. She kind of turned, and she was standing above me. She pointed down at me and said, 'You! If I would have known that you were going to be supportive of a casino coming to Bethlehem, I never would have supported you.'

For that moment I was back in 11th grade being scolded for not having a paper in on time. It made me, for a moment, second guess 'cause I think, 'If she's not in favor of gaming, then maybe I need to rethink my thought on this as well.' It 00:09:00was a funny moment. I wouldn't say funny. It was a stressful moment for me. It's one I look back on, and it's funny now. Her and I kind of laugh about it now. She says, 'I wish you wouldn't tell that story anymore because I think in retrospect you were right to bring it here and it's worked out pretty well.' It wasn't her best moment, but it made me step back for a moment and say, 'Is this really the right direction for the city?' But I think in retrospect, it was certainly the right call.

I had great faith in them being the largest market cap gaming company. They have the resources, the wherewithal, and the vision to execute the project in the way that they said they would. On top of that is when they came to the site for the 00:10:00first time, they understood it. They got where we were as a community and what we were trying to achieve in terms of the design and the scale of the project. Because of the type of destination resorts they had built in the past, it didn't take them long to figure out how they could do something here that would incorporate well into the whole theme of steel and industry. It wasn't something that we had to force upon them. It was something they kind of got in the beginning.

It really does mimic some of the old machine shop buildings and some of the architecture that exists there, both in the form and and in the materials that they used. It's a lot of steel and glass, brick. It kind of fits seamlessly into its environment, and that was important to me to learn from other communities. 00:11:00So many of these casinos kind of look like a spaceship that landed from another planet. It doesn't relate to anything else around it. It sort of looks like it's literally from another world, and I didn't want that for our site. I wanted this thing to work as an integral part of the whole redevelopment of the Steel site. I didn't want it to stick out that way; I wanted it to blend. But it also has to operate and function as a casino and be lively and welcoming and something that's going to bring people there to have a good time. So I think we struck that right balance.

Validation of that for me was the day that we opened the casino. I was kind of sitting out front in the traffic island in front of the casino. I was watching the flow of the traffic, and it was an important day to make sure it all went well. I had this woman from New Jersey pull up-- didn't know who I was 00:12:00obviously. I'm standing literally in front of the casino, in front of the giant Sands sign on the crane. And she asked me, 'Do you know where the casino is?' I literally just had to turn around and kind of go, 'There it is.' To me that was a real validation that we had achieved the outcome that we had hoped for, in that she drove by it--a 600 or 700 million dollar investment--and it looked like everything else around it.

Well, I share some of that frustration. I think the Sands even wishes that they could do more at times. The [No. 2 Machine Shop] project is a massive project. The building is a third of a mile long in length, and at the time that it was built was the largest industrial building under roof in the world. So it's not 00:13:00for the faint of heart.

We've had a couple of attempts in tackling that project not work out, and I know that Sands was as disappointed in that as anybody else. At some point they're a gaming company, and they're going to make investments centered around gaming. They expect a return on investment that gaming provides. So some of those other kinds of ancillary economic investments on the rest of the site maybe don't make a lot of sense for them in terms of ROI. I think what might be best in the long term is for Sands to step back and let others that want to do it purely as a real estate investment versus an alternative to an investment in a casino someplace else in the world.

We'll see how that pans out for the future. I think everybody wishes the project 00:14:00were further along. 'Cause at some point these buildings aren't going to last forever, and you do run the risk of demolition by neglect. Time is of the essence to make those investments because I would not want to see a significant amount of demolition on any of these buildings. I think we've got enough of a critical mass so they can still keep that sense of the old plant and the history that took place there. We've allowed a fair amount of demolition to allow for new investment on the site. The opportunities exist and I hope that everybody sees those opportunities sooner than later.

Well, I think what's one of Bethlehem's strengths over the course of their 275 year history is that they've been able to kind of change, yet still keep a 00:15:00certain spirit and not necessarily leave behind what made the City special or its history. Sort of build upon it. Whether that was our colonial history, our colonial industrial history, and then the steelmaking history. The125 years of steelmaking history in this community. That obviously brought great change to Bethlehem--from a Moravian settlement to what we then became. And then steel went away, and it was time for us to move on from that.

Part of the challenge in introducing gaming to Bethlehem was to let people know that you didn't have to give that up. That's still here. It's not going to change fundamentally who we are. We just have to incorporate into our identity as we move forward. So, yeah, we have a casino in Bethlehem, and some people know us that way. But those people that come to the casino also have an opportunity to get to know a different perspective on Bethlehem when they come 00:16:00to visit. We're also known as a community that has great arts and culture as a result of SteelStacks.

We're going to continue to evolve and change. It's been Bethlehem's strength that we have that capability. It's sort of inevitable. If you're not capable of evolving and adapting over time, ultimately you're gonna die. It's something that's not easy. Change is not easy for people--individuals. It's certainly not easy for a community. But we've been able to digest those changes in bites that are small enough that people can tolerate them.

I'm certainly proud of the public input and the process that we followed to give 00:17:00everybody a chance to let their voice be heard. That wasn't easy at times, but it was important for the process to be open. I'm very happy with the design of the casino and how it fits into the community. The fact that you can drive by there on any given day and almost not know that it's there, but if you drove in and saw it there's probably fifty thousand people in there. But you'd almost never know it. That was by design as well, and you don't see big traffic backups or parking issues in the downtown. So I was happy with the way the casino ultimately was executed. That was also by design and took a lot of planning. It didn't happen by accident.

But most importantly, I'm incredibly proud of SteelStacks and the uniqueness of that development and what took place there. It's funny. The first time that a 00:18:00portion of Musikfest was moved over to SteelStacks, I was waiting in line to get a ticket to go into the main stage. And in front of me was a mother and a daughter from Scranton, Pennsylvania. They obviously didn't know who I was. I remember the mom turning to her daughter and saying, 'I wish we had one of these in our community, in our town.' And I kind of chuckled to myself, and I said, 'Five or ten years ago, no one would have I wish I had the largest brownfield site and in all the country in my city.' We found a way to make lemonade out of lemons, and the SteelStacks project is really about that. It's a world-class arts and cultural campus that is unique to us. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the world because the environment in which it's in doesn't exist anywhere else in the world.

I'm really, really proud of that project. I think that now lays the foundation for another wave of investment on that site, both residential and office. That's how the rest of that site's gonna ultimately be redeveloped. A big part of that's going to be the SteelStacks campus. So if I had to really pick one in that whole process of gaming, it would be the result of taking that investment and that energy of the casino and building the SteelStacks project.