Casinos

Even in a city that has entertained the most improbable of dreams, the latest plan to woo tourists and big bucks to Garden Grove is off the charts. An Indian tribe has formally proposed building a Las Vegas-style casino complex just up the road from Disneyland in the latest and far and away most lavish plan for making Garden Grove a tourist destination.

A coalition of labor and horse racing interests announced Friday that it will ask voters to pull the plug on a huge tribal gambling expansion negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The owner of two racetracks and the hotel workers' union will team up on a campaign that could put four new initiatives on the February ballot and cost tens of millions of dollars. Some tribes with casinos that are not part of the expansion said they might join the effort.

Voters overwhelmingly endorsed a deal with an American Indian tribe Saturday that could bring casino gambling to the state and millions of dollars to the struggling, rural community. Residents gathered at a quintessential rural New England event, the Town Meeting, and voted 2,387 to 1,335 in favor of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe's $1-billion casino in this town of about 20,000.

SACRAMENTO -- A high-stakes political battle may be coming to a shopping center near you. On one side are a union and a racetrack owner asking people to sign petitions that would undo Indian gambling deals. On the other are Southern California tribes hoping to thwart them by persuading people not to sign -- or to withdraw their names.

After years of toying with the notion of building Orange County's first casino, Garden Grove officials are now close to throwing in the towel on the idea once and for all. Two of the city's five council members said they oppose the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe's plan for an opulent casino; a third council member, who said he had been intrigued by the proposal, acknowledged it may be in trouble.

As more and more Americans take to casino gambling, the industry has lately taken to water. Poolside is now the hottest spot in many a Vegas resort, the new ground zero for sometimes bawdy and naughty (sometimes even topless) adult-only frolicking and even a few swim-up games of blackjack.

Nevada casinos won the most money from gamblers in a single month in July, raking in $1.146 billion as luck favored the house. The casinos' so-called gaming win was up 10.3% from a year earlier and beat the previous record of $1.144 billion in May. The state's "hold" percentage, or the amount won by casinos as a percentage of the total amount wagered, was 15%. A year earlier, the hold percentage was 13.4%, which is normal, Gaming Control Board analyst Frank Streshley said.

The Garden Grove City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday to kill a casino proposal that promised $70 million in annual tax revenue and college scholarships to every high school graduate, forcefully ending the central Orange County city's three-year dance with casino backers. "We made a very strong statement with that 5-0 vote," said Councilwoman Dina Nguyen. "It will give the casino developers a hint that it will not be that easy to get into Garden Grove again."

atlantic city, n.j. -- MGM Mirage Inc. plans to build a mega-casino resort worth as much as $5 billion that will dwarf anything Atlantic City has seen before, the company said Wednesday. The move is part of a gamble by casino operators to polish Atlantic City's image and attract upscale customers who want to do more than just bet money. The project, which will be called MGM Grand Atlantic City, will cost $4.

The highway along the Mississippi Gulf Coast would be forlorn if not for the casinos, which are having their best year ever. The devastation of Hurricane Katrina has proven to be little more than a temporary setback to the conversion of formerly sleepy beachfront communities into the Las Vegas of the Deep South. Although affordable housing is scarce and businesses have trouble getting insurance coverage to rebuild since the storm, 11 casinos are open in Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St.