SugarHouse at Center of Big Casino Turf War
When the $550 million SugarHouse Casino opened 28 months ago on a Delaware River waterfront site in South Philadelphia, opponents of the project worried that local businesses would suffer.
Kathy Smith said she hasn’t noticed one bit of difference.
Smith, a tough-talking, streetwise native of South Philly, has spent 25 years working at the city’s cheesesteak landmark Pat’s King of Steaks, which opened in 1930 at the X-shaped intersection of Ninth Street and Passyunk Avenue.
The SugarHouse is roughly four miles from Pat’s. It doesn’t have a hotel and has few dining options. What the casino does offer are 57 table games and 1,600 slot machines, which produced the highest revenue per machine, per day of all Pennsylvania’s 11 casinos, state gaming regulators said.
