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.

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Steve Wynn is going to bid for the last casino license in Philadelphia.

The chairman of Wynn Resorts Ltd. proposes to build a 150,000-square-foot casino with 900 slot machines and 100 table games and a 300-room hotel on about 60 acres of waterfront property, a company spokesman confirmed Thursday.

Michael Weaver, senior vice president marketing strategy at Wynn Resorts, said the company will file for a casino license by the state’s Nov. 15 deadline. The Las Vegas-based gaming company had proposed building a $600 million casino in the spring of 2010 in Philadelphia before pulling out.

“We are excited about Philadelphia and the opportunity afforded by our piece of property on the banks of the Delaware River,” said Wynn, who is also his company’s CEO. “It allows for a luxury hotel complex and the introduction of the Wynn brand to Philadelphia.”

Wynn said his assignment was to build a resort that attracted visitors to the city.

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