Bekah Rusnock

My name is Bekah Rusnock, and I was an editorial assistant for The Bethlehem Press newspaper when the casino debates were starting. That was my first job as a journalist. I was fresh out of college and was kind of thrown into a very large story that I covered with a lot of passion, I think, because it was so exciting to be at that stage of my life with this brand new development that was going on. And then my last day--the day that I told my boss that this is my 2 weeks' notice--was the day that the casino opened. My first story was the casino; my first day on the job was to cover the city council meeting where they debated gaming and gambling and should be allowed in the IR district? And then my last day on the job was the grand opening at the casino. I went to that; it was a cool event with the Blue Man Group and like fireworks and all kinds of crazy stuff going on. And I walked back to the office, which is on 3rd Street just a couple blocks from where the casino is, and I told my boss that I was putting my 2 weeks' notice. That I kind of wanted to see that story from beginning to end. I felt I did that, and it was just time to move on. Then I 00:01:00went and worked for the City of Bethlehem in economic development for the next four years.

Yes, I can, yeah. So the debates over gambling and gaming were full of characters, I think is probably the best way to describe it. Pretty much everyone in Bethlehem had an opinion about gaming or gambling. And there were pretty much two large groups: one pro-gaming. Gaming is going to be the economic engine that helps us revitalize the Bethlehem Steel site. And anti-gambling, gambling be a--I would say it ranged from as a sin to just something we don't want in our town. A lot of the negatives of gambling people thought were a poor balance to the Christmas City vibe of the city. So the debates were lively and often.

More casual debates were a little bit more fun to listen to because, you know, 00:02:00people would bring up very like personal things, like you know, 'my great-grandfather worked at that steel plant, and he be rolling over in his grave if he knew what they were going to do to it.' At the same time people would say, you know, 'my great-grandfather worked at that steel site, and he knows that we need jobs.' So it was it was a good show. It was very entertaining, and it was very impassioned.

I kind of picked the best seat in the house for lack of a better term. When I walked into that meeting as a very new reporter, I didn't really know the rules of where you sit and, you know, you have to identify yourself as the press. So I kind of found my way down to the front of the auditorium, and there was a press table, and I felt like I should sit not at it, but near it. So I sat about two rows back because the first row, you couldn't sit there because of where the chairs were, so I sat right behind that row. And I just so happened to sit next to an older woman who told me that she was a Moravian, and an older gentleman 00:03:00that told me that he was a former steelworker. The Moravian woman happened to be in the anti-gambling camp, and the steelworker was in the pro-gaming camp. Throughout the meeting they would--the public was just making comments, so it would be--someone would stand up and say, 'I'm against gambling,' and the steelworker guy would grab my shirt and say, 'That's so and so. I went to Liberty with him, and this is why he's saying that. This is the background.' So I was like okay, I'm trying to get like all sides of the story here, and I literally was sitting between the pro and the cons. And they weren't press-prepped people. They were just regular residents, so they were just giving me their honest opinion about what was happening and about what people were saying. And trying to fill in more like the small-town gossip color to the story.

The presence of Sands was very clear in Bethlehem leading up to the decision on 00:04:00the gaming license. They moved basically a small team here that's kind of like--I would consider them to be like their outreach team: marketing professionals, public relations professionals, people that are good at communicating, people that really understand the Sands' message and their duty is to deploy it in a community. A lot of those people were about the same age as I was, so I got to know some of them very well just 'cause we kind of were in the same social circle of being like young professionals in a small town. There's not that many different places you can go; there's only so many coffee shops, and so many sports bars, and so many nice places to go out to dinner. Everyone that I talked to--the Sands people were very much on message. You weren't getting their personal opinion about the matter, 'cause it's not really their personal opinion. They work for a corporation. I got the sense that they were very committed to what they were saying. The message that I was hearing in a public meeting from the President of the Sands was the same message that I was 00:05:00hearing from like my friend who happened to work in public relations. They were very present in public arenas, too. You'd see them at DBA events and Chamber of Commerce mixers and things like that. They certainly put the effort out, just as a lot of companies put the effort out. I mean if you ever go to a Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce mixer, a good portion the room is just a new business that started or a new business that expanded into the area. They're going to send the same people. Their marketing people, their communications people, their public relations people are going to come out to meet the community, and that's their whole job. So it was very well organized because Sands is a very well-run company. It wasn't odd in that I've seen other people do the same thing. It's a good kind of first step for professionals to get out and meet other people in your community.

I remember I was at a--the Sands had a public meeting for people who wanted to 00:06:00be vendors. So they have incentives, like if you're a female-owned business, just like the state also has these incentives. If you're a female-owned business, you're a minority owned business. They have a process, you know, 'here's who we pick for vendors. Not just females and minorities, but here's who we look for for vendors. This is the paperwork, this is what it's going to look like. Here's how we work with you.'

And I sat next to a woman who had an embroidery business, and I said, you know, 'what would you do? Like an embroidery business--how would this casino benefit you?' And she said, 'Well, look they're going to have uniforms. You know, the people that park your car have one uniform. The people that cook your food have one uniform. The people that deal the cards have one uniform. The janitor has one uniform. Housekeeping has different uniform.' And she said, 'They most frequently will stitch a name, like the person's name on the uniform, and that's what I do: embroidery.' And she said, 'It's important that, you know, if they're going to put out a contract where they need a hundred new uniforms, that's big 00:07:00business for me, that's like life changing business. I don't do that much size in one sitting. I do maybe 30, 10, 6, but a hundred is a huge order.' So she's like, "I want to know right from the beginning that I want to work with him. I need to know their process that's why I'm here."

So it's interesting to hear how small businesses were thinking about how this large business was going to affect them. And I never really thought about embroidery ever in my life until I met her, but she had a very interesting story.

The Sands always put on show, a full show. You always got that hundred percent. They really put a lot of thought into how this is going to go and who should be there. At all those steps--the groundbreaking, the last steel beam going in, preview night, everything. The grand opening was the first time that the public had been in the building, and everything smelled brand-new. Sorta like when you 00:08:00build a house and it smells like paint. Everything is crisp and clean and shiny. It had been polished to the nines.

They had Sheldon Adelson, who's the head of Las Vegas Sands and he's really one of the richest people in the world, he came with his wife. They had all these dignitaries speak. They would always have the group from Save Our Steel Group. It's former steelworkers that are interested in preserving the history of the site. The Sands had teamed with them, and there would always be a row of older gentleman that could tell you good stories about the steel site and good memories. They were there. The Blue Man Group, they're like a performance art group, they were there. I think there was a band of some sort.

Typically at a grand opening for a business, you cut a ribbon, usually a big red ribbon. They hold it. They get big, goofy, oversized scissors, and they cut it. But they actually cut steel beam at the opening of the Sands. They had a steel beam, and one of the steelworkers who worked on the project to put the steel up 00:09:00for the actual structure, he cut it with a welding torch. It was very entertaining, but that's what that event should have been. There was a lot of enthusiasm. Speeches from a lot of dignitaries. A couple people from the state. I'm trying to remember. I don't think the governor was there, but I don't remember. It was a show. It was like a performance.

Bethlehem Steel's history is particularly unique because most industrial sites don't abut a town the way this one does. When you look at Bethlehem from 30,000 feet straight up in the air, like you're a bird looking down. You can kind of draw the outline of the city, and right through the middle is a river. Right next to the river is where Bethlehem Steel is. It's a heart. People say it's a 00:10:00heart emotionally, that it's like that's how people feel about it, but it's also physically that be located where your heart would be if the city was a person. At one point roughly 50% of population in the city worked for that company, and in jobs like steelworker, accountant, secretary, janitor, every level of job was working there.

I think those industrial towns are very popular in Pennsylvania. Palmerton is that way. There's a lot of places that were grown around a plant. But here, the name Bethlehem--the community's name--is actually in the name of the company. I think that's really important to people there. There's a huge sense of pride there. When you go to New York and they're tearing down a building, if that beam comes from Bethlehem, it says the word Bethlehem on the beam. They stamped the beams with the name of the company, which just so happened to be the name of the town.

Because everyone worked there, it was kind of like neutral ground. 'So even 00:11:00though we're immigrants and we're here because we're here for jobs. I'm Italian, and you're Irish. Normally in a lot of circumstances, we might not get along, but you know we both have to make sure this scalding hot beam doesn't shear our fingers off, so we need to work as a team.' That attitude ended up at Liberty High School. That attitude ended up on 4th Street. That attitude ended up on Market Street. Everywhere the community people just realized, 'we have to work together, and if we can work together, then we should work together.'

So I would say that the casino is definitely part of the identity of the city if you are from outside of Bethlehem and coming here. I don't know that people that live in Bethlehem really still first thought being Sands Casino. One of the plans that the Las Vegas Sands had pushed forth was that the site was going to be integrated into the grid of the South Side, but also hidden at the same time. 00:12:00The actual casino building, not the mall, not the hotel, but the actual, 'This is where you can play blackjack, this is where you can play slots,' is built in an ore pit. That's where the raw material that was coming to Bethlehem Steel was used--they built that part in the pit, which just geographically sits a little lower than that 3rd Street corridor. I think even though they have that enormous Sands sign in front of the ore bridge, people just breeze right by there and don't pay attention to it.

I think Sands was a little strategic in not wanting to glom on to the Christmas City identity, respectful of the fact that the core of that identity is Main Street. When you go into the Sands around Christmastime, if you go in there in the mall, they do a really nice Christmas tree. The decorations are really nice. It's very pretty. It's festive. But I don't think that--it's not like they temporarily change their name to 'Sands Christmas Bethlehem,' or anything. I think they're kind of respectful of that in more so the way that Bethlehem Steel functioned, where it was like, 'we're a member of this community and if this is 00:13:00the campaign that we've all agreed on, than we'll participate, but we don't need to be the star of that campaign.'

I think it's important remember the fence. There used to be a fence totally around the whole site. Even though you could see that there was a road, your car couldn't get through 'cause there was a fence with a gate. I actually used to sometimes go down next to the fence to like write stories if I didn't feel like being in the office anymore because you can sit out there. It was open, and it was just kind of nice just to get some air. But there was a fence around the whole site, so you couldn't just walk down there with your car and put your car in front of the blast furnaces and take pictures of your car, like people do now. You couldn't get your wedding photos taken there. You couldn't get your engagement photos, like if your friends pop out of a bush. That didn't exist. Even though people in Bethlehem had this very strong association and attachment 00:14:00to the Bethlehem Steel property, they physically couldn't touch it because of the fence.

When the casino opened, that network of roads became really important because the casino just wants more routes to get to the casino and to get the parking. So they had to open up those fences. They had to break down those walls to get people to drive to the site. And at the same time as ArtsQuest is being developed, and the Steel Stacks complex is opening, and PBS is opening down there, like that road network services those properties, as well. So as soon as those fences went down it was almost like people like woke up one day and thought, 'wow, I could go take a photo down there. I could go stand there and just look up at it just like you could have if you worked at Bethlehem Steel.'

I think it's important to remember that there was always a fence there because it's not like we could just wander down to the steel plant and hang out. It was security gates, and you need to have an ID and a tag to get down there. It was a secure site. You don't want kids playing near molten steel; that's not a real 00:15:00good combination. So even if your grandfather worked there, you personally may have never visited that site. You maybe went for one treat one time when it was employee day, or maybe on your grandfather's retirement day. They allowed you to come in for a small party in an office, but it's not like you were ever allowed to go down there and just play.

As soon as those barriers were removed, and again the only reason they were removed was because the road network was needed to get people to the Sands, people started to see that site as more of a community gathering space. The way a park would be, that you would go there and eat your lunch or go there and play with your kids or go fishing or walk your dog. So that really changed for people as soon as those barriers were taken down. You still can't go into the individual buildings, obviously because they're abandoned and not safe. But the fact that you can walk down the sidewalk and stand right next to the blast furnaces really strengthened that connection between community and site. I see it everywhere now. It's just like this backdrop that everyone has access to, like for prom and engagements, weddings. People just want to be near it, and 00:16:00they want it to be part of their memories.

That first conversation I had with the pro-gaming, anti-casino people that I sat next to. The gentleman that was the former steelworker, what he told me about why he wanted the casino to come to town, was that people need jobs. I think we forget sometimes because politically you talk so much about job creation and people say, 'jobs, jobs, jobs,' you don't actually stop to think about what your job means to you. What it means to have a job. To get up every morning and to go to work and to help other people accomplish a task. What that means for your psyche and psychologically, for your emotional health. The first thing that happened is that the Sands hired a lot of people. So a lot of people that, and I'm not talking about ten years ago they were a steelworker and now they're a blackjack dealer. It was that they hired a lot of people, and that jobs were 00:17:00present, and that people were getting them. Your group of friends, maybe three or four people interviewed, two people got a job. It's a big deal when your friends start to get jobs. That's a huge life step, and you're proud of them 'cause you know that they want a job and it's good for them. That bringing of jobs was really important.

I don't know that people march around with a ton of pride over the job so much because I don't tend to know a lot of people that work there right now. The people that I knew that got jobs there were working--it was like first job out of college or upper level high school, 17-18, 'I'm saving up to buy a car. I need a job.' You can work at a restaurant. You can work in a store. That's pretty much what you're qualified to do. You can manual labor. You can work at a landscaping business or haul concrete. But at 17, you're not super qualified to accomplish a lot of things. So those first jobs for people that I knew were 00:18:00working at the mall, at the Sands Mall. That job didn't exist for that person a year before they got job. That initial push was really great that there was all these jobs. People had a lot of self-pride in the fact that they had a job. I don't know so much that people were like bragging like, 'I got a job at the Sands,' so much as it was, 'I got a job.'

The other big impact that the Sands had was this kind of elevation of a standard. The woman that I met that had the embroidery business talked about this to me. She said, 'We're going to have top restaurants in this community. We're going to have bartenders that know how to shake up and mix a drink, and not just like pour you a beer off the tap. That standard's going to be elevated because this is one of the top entertainment corporations on the planet, and they have a standard and all of us are going to kind of have to rise to it.' Now, not everyone's going to be that bartender or work in that kitchen. But if you have a restaurant that's near the casino, you're going to want some of those 00:19:00dollars. Some of those people are going to eat dinner not at the casino. They're going to go to another restaurant, or they're going to stay at a different hotel. So everyone's game had to step up. I think that had a huge impact on the community, too. I think there is a feeling that the casino came here and it didn't destroy us, and there's a lot of pride behind that. Because it's kind of like this, 'Bethlehem's tough enough to not only come back from the loss of its main industry, but also to assimilate around another huge industry without becoming Las Vegas, without becoming Atlantic City.' I believe there's a lot of pride around that.

There's a lot more fun things to do here than there were in 2005. The entertainment options have really grown. The options of where to live have grown. There's a lot more apartment complexes, and there's a lot more variety of 00:20:00size and amenities around. Things were picking up in 2005 when I got here. You could tell that there was some momentum, but it was still pretty sparse. There was three bars to pick from, two coffee shops to hang out in. Now there's twenty bars and ten coffeeshops.

The attitude of everyone here has just grown. You find more people that move back here after college. I was kind of part of the first generation that was like, 'I'm not going to move to Philly or New York or Chicago or Boston or DC. I'm going to stay around Lehigh Valley and work at this job and see what happens from here.' Now we have people that are deliberately moving back to the area to start families and raise families. That's really good. The momentum kind of paid off. Those early seeds have grown, and I think it's really good to see that. You should see that in a community. You want a community to grow because it only does one of two things. Either community grows or community dies. You don't want 00:21:00the alternative. So the fact that there has been growth is a good thing.