Selling out PARCEL BY PARCEL
Casino companies continue land purchases
By TOM WILEMON
tewilemon@sunherald.com
BILOXI - It would be hard to find anyone who loves Point Cadet more than Fay Bloomberg, but she’s not coming back.
She recently sold her home on Pine Street to East Beach Development Corp., a subsidiary of Harrah’s Entertainment, the parent company of Grand Casino.
“If all the neighbors are gone,” she said, “it’s not a neighborhood.”
Parcel by parcel, casino companies and land speculators are buying up big chunks of East Biloxi from the Point to Interstate 110. They’re delving into what were neighborhoods. Although the new state law that allows casinos to move ashore still requires them to be within 800 feet of the mean high tide, whole city blocks beyond the waterfront are being bought. A hotel, parking lot or other casino amenity does not have to be within the 800-foot zone.
The land sales have made some folks instant millionaires. Others say they haven’t been offered enough money to buy replacement housing.
Key Largo Holdings LLC has recorded 117 deed transfers around the IP Casino in the past year. Virtually all the property along Back Bay Boulevard, except that owned by the city and the Biloxi Housing Commission, has been bought by land speculators or a holding company affiliated with Boomtown Casino.
On Point Cadet, the Isle of Capri, the restaurant chain that owns the Golden Nugget brand and Harrah’s Entertainment have bought land since the storm. The casino company buying the most land on the Point has been Harrah’s. Its acquisitions run north from the beach to Howard Avenue and extend east and west for four city blocks. Harrah’s closed last week on its purchase of the Casino Magic property.
Bloomberg lived north of Casino Row in the historic Zengel House on Pine Street. She would not abandon it for Hurricane Katrina. As the house disintegrated around her during the height of the storm, she grabbed hold of a mattress and floated to safety.
“When we moved up there, I had my seventh birthday on the back porch,” she said. “That was the big house. It was a grand thing for a little girl. I lived there since I was 7 years old except for when my husband was in the military.”
The Victorian house was built in 1899 as the weekend home for the owner of a New Orleans furniture store. He and his wife were committed to the people of this neighborhood, teaching Slovenian immigrants to read and write.
The Slovenians weren’t the first wave of immigrants to establish a foothold on the Point, and they weren’t the last. The French came before them and the Vietnamese afterward. Black families also called the eastern portion of the Biloxi Peninsula home, making it the state’s most ethnically diverse area.
The Point is the cradle of the city. The people who settled there didn’t have to speak English to fish or work in a seafood factory. When Harrison County legalized gambling, casinos replaced the factories. People could still walk to work, follow the sound of church bells to St. Michael’s Catholic Church or stroll down to the farmers market on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The church is staying. Some stalwarts are rebuilding, but it’s not an easy task. Almost every home on the Point was destroyed, and the city is requiring that new houses be built to higher elevations.
Back Bay neighborhoods were also flooded by Katrina’s storm surge, but the damage was not as severe. Historic homes that survived the hurricane are being wheeled away to make room for casino parking.
The city allowed Key Largo, a separate legal entity from the IP casino that is, nevertheless, affiliated with the resort, to have the Creel House at 445 Reynoir St. moved and donated to the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art.
Grace Carroll, who grew up on Reynoir, watched that house wheeled away as well as another one. Key Largo has bought up to her property line, she said.
“Since I’m the first one from the bay, I don’t know what they’re going to do or who is going to be my neighbor,” she said.
She rejected an initial offer of $86,000 for her two-bedroom brick, which that still needs repairs, because she couldn’t afford to buy anything else at that price. Secondary offers with more money have had caveats attached about convincing nearby family and neighbors to sell, Carroll said.
Chris Battle bought a Victorian bungalow on Reynoir Street, catty-corner from the Hebrew Rest Cemetery, a few months before Katrina. An employee with the Biloxi School District’s transportation services, he had admired the house from a school bus.
“I thought if the house ever comes up for sale I’d be interested in buying it,” he said. “That afternoon there was a for-sale sign.”
Now, it’s Battle who has a for-sale sign in the yard. He and his wife worry about the changing character of their neighborhood. He can look up one street and see the IP Casino, then down another street, where the Bacaran Bay Casino will go.
Battle said he hopes a casino will buy his land and allow him to move the house elsewhere.
“We see all the property being bought up and the casinos coming in,” he said. “We don’t want to be all up in the middle of that.”
Source: Sun Herald