Paul Pierpoint

I'm Paul Pierpoint. I'm the retired Vice President of Community Education and Dean of the Southside Center for Northampton Community College. I've been on the South Side for most of the last 15 years or so.

Well, I had two different titles. As Vice President, I was in charge of all the non-credit we did, including a lot of workforce development stuff. As Dean of the South Side, it was my job to develop this facility that we're in right now, the Fowler Family South Side Center, to serve the people primarily of South Bethlehem, but for the whole region.

When we first came here and bought this building and started working on it, there wasn't even any legislation about casinos in Pennsylvania. But once the legislation was passed and Bethlehem was in the mix, I became an instant fan. The college was a little more hesitant because they understood the political 00:01:00challenges of bringing a casino into Bethlehem. But I knew it was really important to bring somebody that had deep pockets in order to develop the former Bethlehem Steel property and to bring a lot of good jobs. The people who were on the pro side--I was very much part of that. I thought this was really important step forward for the college. When they actually got the license, it was like we won the Super Bowl. It was a big party. We were very excited because we knew that the future of South Side of Bethlehem and Bethlehem itself was very much altered in that very moment that we got the license.

When you think about who we serve as a community college, we serve this community, the people who live here. We serve, in general, many of the underserved and underprivileged people who suffer the most when jobs disappear, 00:02:00when the economy goes south. We saw the casino as a tremendous economic opportunity for people to get jobs and become self-sufficient, independent, contributing members of our community. Others, including the other colleges, saw it as a potential threat. Gambling can be an addictive behavior. And young people, you know, students have to be 21 to get in, but many of our students are 21.

Even before they had anything going on, before they even had a license, for that matter, they approached us to be their training provider. They wanted the local community college to be signed on as part of their application down to Harrisburg to get the license. Of course we did that instantly. There was not a problem. We wrote the MOU and committed ourselves to being their primary 00:03:00workforce development provider.

When we got the license, the first thing they did was they hired their new president for the local sands and two or three top end executives. They moved into this building where we are now. They became tenants in our building. We got to know them very well. That created the start for a really solid partnership that continues to this day more than a decade later. Bob DeSalvio and his vice president for human resources and their chief legal officer, they were all here from day one. We got to know them personally. They got to know the president very well and all the top people at our college. Because of that partnership that we established very early on and the relationship we established very early on laid the groundwork for a really, really good partnership.

This was their hiring center, so everybody that worked there came through this building to be interviewed and screened and selected to get their license to 00:04:00work at a casino. We didn't really do a lot of workforce development initially. We thought we were gonna be training slot machine technicians, but the vendors did their own training. At that point, we were more of a partner in the community, a supporting entity. It wasn't until a few years later when table games were legalized and we became a really big training provider. At that point, they needed I think it was five hundred dealers, and they needed them in like three months when they were going to open their table games. We reached out and worked out a partnership, literally a partnership where they provided all the equipment, the tables, the supplies, everything we needed. We went and got an approved curriculum. We had an approved curriculum that was approved by the State Gaming Commission. The biggest challenge we had was going to be getting trainers. Where do you find people to teach table games in Pennsylvania that 00:05:00never had table games?

I talked to their president, and I suggested that they hire their management people, their pit bosses and floor bosses and the people who would be managing their dealers, hire them three months earlier than when they would normally hire them. Then we'll hire them as adjunct professors to teach the casino courses here at the college. That's exactly what we did. We ended up with the best possible training team you could have. They ended up training the people that they were going to hire anyway and eventually become working for them. They got to know all our students really well. We knew we had a great curriculum because they tweaked a little bit to make sure it met their needs. When we were done with that first three months and graduated more than 500 people to go work over there, it was just a home run all around. They were very happy. They were very excited. Our students were happy. They had to pay for the training, and so we were happy because we made some money. But more importantly, we helped 500 00:06:00people get jobs. At that time, if you remember, that's when the economy was in the tank. There were no jobs. We were training real estate agents and accountants and all kinds of people who had been full-time employed up until a year before. Now, because of this program, they were able to get full time jobs with benefits. The pay was adequate, 35-40 thousand dollars a year. Not too bad for three months of training. That was that was a real home run. We got a lot of publicity and a lot of notoriety for that. All around, it was just a really, really good project.

We have many of our culinary students that end up working at the various restaurants there, our hospitality students, hotel and restaurant management 00:07:00students. Maybe the biggest partnership that was started long ago and continues very strong is the Food and Wine Festival, where all the proceeds go to the college for scholarships. That's a quarter million dollars a year. And on of the other really cool things about that is several times Emeril Lagasse has come himself. Whether he's here or not, several of our students culinary students get selected to go do an internship at his flagship operation in New Orleans. When you think about a community college, somebody from a community college getting their degree in culinary arts and on their resumé, it says that they interned with Emerlin Lagasse in New Orleans. I mean, that's an amazing accomplishment. That's an amazing opportunity for these young people to start a career in a really, really interesting and fast growing industry.

One of the things we were worried about is how well will the Sands people fit into this local community? Most of the leadership came from Las Vegas or Atlantic City or other places around the country. Very, very experienced high end executives. When they first moved into our building--and our building, you know, everything goes in here. We've got kids programs and all kinds of fun stuff that goes on here in addition to the more serious programs we have. One day shortly after the casino folks had moved in, we have a program here called Cops 'n' Kids Reading Room where we serve underprivileged kids and help them with youth literacy, give them books and things.

Well, the director of that invited the local high school, the Liberty High School bagpipe band, to come and perform in the building for these kids up on 00:09:00the fifth floor at the time. Well, they marched straight through the lobby. Now the Sands offices are immediately adjacent to the lobby. The bagpipers came marching through the lobby, playing their bagpipes and just blasting it out, echoing all through the lobby. And I just thought, 'Oh, God, this is not going to be good. Our tenants are going to hate this. They're business people.' Instead, they all came out of their offices and stood at the side of the lobby, watch the bagpipers go through. They applauded them as they got on the elevator, and then they got on the elevator and followed them up. They actually went up and watched the kids listening to the bagpipes. It was just amazing. And right then, that's when I knew that these are the people we want to work with. We know these folks are gonna be great in this community and absolutely they are.

From what I've read, you know, I hear all the right things. I think it's really 00:10:00important. I hope this happens because what I've heard they want to do is to keep the current management team to have that continuity because of their commitment to the community. If the new owners are a little more receptive to the idea of developing around the casino, I think that's only good news for us. From what I understand, for the new owners, this will be their flagship operation instead of just a small thing in some backwater little town in Pennsylvania. This will be their primary, their biggest star property. So I hope they want to develop the properties around that because it will reflect on them in a really positive way.