PhillyInc

With all the super casinos sprouting up, or at least being planted, in Atlantic City, folks in the gaming industry and local developers have taken up a game of “Who’s next?” Rumors began circulating last winter that Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, which operates Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, was scouting for its own spot in Atlantic City. Conventional wisdom had it that the tribe did not want to get left out in the cold since its chief in-state rival, Foxwoods Development Co., was chosen in December to build a half-billion-dollar gambling hall on the Philadelphia waterfront, a mere 60 miles from A.C.

Those same rumors have become louder of late since Wall Street investment banker Morgan Stanley got behind the Revel Entertainment Group L.L.C., and Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. and MGM Mirage -- both out of Las Vegas -- have confirmed plans to build their own billion-dollar-plus monster casinos in the nation’s No. 2 gaming market. Seems that New Jersey’s gaming tax rate of 9.25 percent is only helping the trend.

Jeffrey E. Hartmann, chief operating officer of Mohegan Sun Casino, told us earlier this month: “Mohegan Sun in Atlantic City would complement our Pennsylvania and Connecticut properties. … We like the low tax rate. We will consider how the market reacts over the next 18 months.”

That said, Mohegan Sun has placed a hedge in case its Atlantic City dreams fall apart. The Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority also owns and operates the $250 million slots palor at Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, a Pennsylvania slots parlor that opened last November (2006) in Wilkes-Barre with 1,203 slot machines, which cater to the New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania gaming market. An expansion underway will bring it up to 2,500 slots by late summer.(2008)

– Suzette Parmley