Sunday, December 27, 2009

Almanacs “Alabama casinos raise the stakes with upscale entertainment and dining - USA Today” plus 4 more

Almanacs “Alabama casinos raise the stakes with upscale entertainment and dining - USA Today” plus 4 more

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Alabama casinos raise the stakes with upscale entertainment and dining - USA Today

Posted: 27 Dec 2009 03:59 AM PST

Tourists headed through Alabama to the Gulf can now stop at top-line restaurants opened by country singers John Anderson and Lorrie Morgan, catch big-name entertainers like Hank Williams Jr. and Reba McEntire, and gamble in pricey new digs that look like they belong in Las Vegas rather than rural, Bible-belt Alabama.

"We are not a pass-through corridor any more," developer Ronnie Gilley said.

Alabama's casinos don't have slot machines and table games like the casinos in Mississippi. Instead, they are filled with electronic bingo machines, which resemble slot machines with their flashing lights and quick play. The experience can be much the same as slots.

Gambling expert Bill Eadington of the University of Nevada at Reno said Alabama's new attractions have a lot of potential because they are located on major travel routes, and their opening is likely to be felt next door in Mississippi, with its Gulf Coast casino row.

"The more supply you have, the more difficulty you have capturing customers," Eadington said.

The Alabama developers' multimillion-dollar gamble is not just about pulling customers away from Mississippi. Courts in the state are hearing lawsuits challenging the legality of electronic bingo in some counties, and Eadington, director of UNR's Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, said some counties are on shaky legal ground.

But that hasn't stopped the growth in Alabama.

Milton McGregor cut the ribbon Dec. 9 on a 300-room luxury hotel at this Victoryland complex in Shorter, about 20 miles east of Montgomery on Interstate 85. His Oasis hotel will be followed in the new year by a 1,500-seat entertainment center and convention complex.

The hotel and its additions are a $100 million investment in a gambling complex that started with a dog track 25 years ago.

Victoryland opened a modern casino in 2005 and kept expanding until it now houses 6,400 electronic bingo machines — more than any single casino in Nevada, New Jersey or Mississippi has slots, according to Casino City's North American Gaming Almanac.

McGregor said he built the hotel — and has two more in the planning stages — because visitors demanded Victoryland be more than a stopover for a few hours.

"In order to be where we needed to be and wanted to be, we had to become a destination point," McGregor said.

So far, it's paying off, he said, with 40% of the weekend business coming from out of state. That compares to about 70% for Mississippi casinos.

Country Crossing in the southeast corner of the state opened its $87 million first phase on Dec. 1, with more new attractions in the new year pushing the total investment over $200 million.

A country music-themed complex south of Dothan looks very different from Victoryland.

Country Crossing uses an architectural style that blends TV's "Mayberry" and "Petticoat Junction" into a made-from-scratch small town. This hamlet just happens to offer restaurants named for country singers, an inn called George Jones' Possum Holler, a concert amphitheater, an RV park, and electronic bingo machines.

For now, Gilley, the developer, is hoping to get tourists to stop briefly on their way to and from the beach on U.S. 231. He's expecting that to start changing when he opens two hotels, a water park, a bowling alley and family entertainment center next year.

"We expect in the next five years we will become a destination and the beach will become a day trip," he said.

Alabama's Poarch Band of Creek Indians opened the $245 million Wind Creek complex at Atmore in January. In addition to electronic bingo, it features a 236-room upscale hotel, four restaurants, an amphitheater with major headliners, and a cooking studio directed by award-winning chef Stafford DeCambra, who previously worked at a Mississippi casino.

Wind Creek sits along Interstate 65, a major route to Gulf Coast beaches and Mississippi's coastal casinos, and its 17-story hotel has become a landmark towering above the rural area's vast stretches of pine forests.

"From the beginning, we were intent on providing patrons with an experience incomparable to anything else offered in the region," Jay Dorris, president of Poarch Creek Indian Gaming, said at the opening.

So far, Alabama casinos are drawing primarily from Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

The executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission, Larry Gregory, said Alabama's new attractions "have had very little impact on our market over here."

Gregory said Mississippi offers clusters of casinos, with multiple entertainers and amenities to choose from — an aggregate convenience Alabama doesn't have.

That doesn't bother Mae Childers and Ina Lay, two Alabama widows who were playing recently at Victoryland. They said they used to travel out of state to gamble, but now spend their money in Alabama.

"I've been to Biloxi, Tunica, Las Vegas and Atlantic City. This compares favorably," said Childers, 72, of Alexander City.

"It's like some of the casinos in Las Vegas," said Lay, 74, of Dadeville.

At Country Crossing, retiree George Carter of Bruce, Fla., said playing electronic bingo took some adjustment because, unlike slot machines, it requires more than one push of a button each game. But he had nothing but compliments for his surroundings.

"This used to be farm field. Now it's a nice place," he said.

Daily almanac - Columbus Dispatch

Posted: 27 Dec 2009 04:13 AM PST

 In 1932, Radio City Music Hall opened in New York.

In 1945, 28 nations signed an agreement creating the World Bank.

 In 1949, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act recognizing Indonesia's sovereignty after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

In 1959, the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants 31-16 to win the NFL championship.

 In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan.

In 2007, opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Pakistan by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally.

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Almanac / Forecast - The Keene Sentinel

Posted: 27 Dec 2009 04:06 AM PST

Sunset today: 4:21 p.m.

Sunrise Monday: 7:19 a.m.

Today: Cloudy, then partly sunny. Not as cool with highs in the mid 40s. Tonight: Mostly cloudy with a chance of snow showers. Lows in the mid-20s.

Monday: Cloudy. Snow showers likely. Cooler with highs in the lower 30s. Monday night: Mostly cloudy. Cooler with lows around 14.

Tuesday: Mostly sunny. Colder with highs 15 to 20. Tuesday night: Mostly clear. Colder with lows around zero.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny. Cold with highs in the lower 20s. Wednesday night: Mostly cloudy. Cold. Lows around 5 above.

Thursday: Mostly cloudy. Highs in the upper 20s. Thursday night: Mostly cloudy. Not as cool with lows around 15.


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VIEWPOINTS: Recalling Alabama's natural history - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 27 Dec 2009 03:30 AM PST

By Special to The Birmingham News

December 27, 2009, 5:36AM
By Pat Byington

There is a wonderful chapter in Aldo Leopold's book "A Sand County Almanac" called "Good Oak," a story about the life of a fallen oak tree. Looking down at the great big stump on his farm, Leopold counts 80 growth rings -- 80 years of wood-making before the tree fell from a bolt of lightning. Mourning the loss of the tree, Leopold begins to use his saw to turn the tree into a cord of firewood. For the next seven pages, Leopold reflects, with every bite of the saw's blades into the rings of the tree, the Wisconsin natural history that the great tree experienced.

Extinction of the passenger pigeon, dust bowls, floods, fires, the creation of Arbor Day and the local Forestry Commission. With each ring, each year of woodmaking, Leopold describes the tree's "witness to history": difficult, sometimes tragic times intermingled with periods of prosperity and growth.

Recently, during a walk at the Jacksonville State University Canyon Center near Little River Canyon, I saw a fallen oak. Touching the rings, I thought about Alabama's history of woodmaking.

Counting back 80 rings, I touched 1930. It was likely that this tree, as a seedling, never witnessed a deer. It's hard to imagine how low Alabama's deer and wild turkey populations had dwindled. In fact, 80 years ago, deer and turkey were seen in only a handful of counties. According to the Conservation Department, in 1940 there were 16,000 deer. Today, we have 1.6 million. There were 11,000 turkeys. Today, we have 400,000.

For the next 30 rings of woodmaking, our fallen tree witnessed the impoundment, primarily for electricity, of almost every free-flowing river in the state. Countless canyons and coves, survivors of Alabama's unique but turbulent natural history, were flooded. Washed away were hundreds of creatures: snails, mussels and all kinds of fish. All disappeared within a generation.

During that generation, our tree witnessed the state's rapid landscape change from farms to forests. In 1938, Alabama was 57 percent forested; by 2008, that figure had risen to 71 percent.

There seemed to be a great awakening around the time our tree turned 40. In the 1970s, people started standing up for our tree, the forests, the air, the water, the soil and the creatures. Alabama's network of state parks was expanded. People such as Mary Burks, founder of the Alabama Conservancy, saved the Sipsey Wilderness. We enacted new federal and state laws to clean the air, water and land.

During the 1980s, as our oak moved toward 50 rings, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management was founded. Doug Phillips' "Discovering Alabama" program was launched on Alabama Public Television. Hazardous waste, landfills and recycling were the big issues of the decade. Two nonprofit law firms, the Southern Environmental Law Center and WildLaw, were created. The Nature Conservancy opened a chapter in Alabama. The Cahaba River Society was established.

In the '90s, 60 rings of woodmaking, the Forever Wild constitutional amendment passed, and over the next 15 years, it helped save more than 200,000 acres and 70 special places. Only a few miles from our fallen tree, a national park was created to protect Little River Canyon.

We've become a more urban state. Rural lands were replaced by subdivisions. Between 1992 and 1997, more than 445,000 acres of rural land were lost to sprawl. We found out from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that more than 50 percent of the creatures that went extinct in North America in the 20th century were Alabama residents. Even so, we still have one of the most biologically diverse states in the nation.

This decade accounted for the final 10 rings in our fallen tree. We worried about "nature deficit disorder" -- the result of our children's shift from playing outdoors to hunkering down in front of TVs and computers. More than 60 volunteer water/river protection groups were established this decade. We cared more about green buildings, renewable energy and sustainability. Environmental education centers and programs began to sprout up all over the state: the 4-H Center in Columbiana, the Alabama Nature Center at Lanark and countless others, including the Canyon Center, our tree's final resting place.

We begin 2010 with some exciting wood-making opportunities: the renewal of the Forever Wild Program, the hiring of a new director at ADEM, the election of a new governor and Legislature, and the creation of the Birmingham Charter, a visionary document that could transform our region and state into a global environmental leader.

This month, the director of the Canyon Center and my longtime friend, Pete Conroy, and his wife, Roxana, welcomed a newborn son. To celebrate the new year and the birth, we will plant an oak to replace the fallen one. In the coming year and the decades to come, as the new tree grows rings, what will Alabama and this oak produce?

Pat Byington is a senior associate at The Wilderness Society. E-mail: pkbyington@aol.com.

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Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus rally - InvestmentNews

Posted: 27 Dec 2009 02:54 AM PST

Skeptical kids can doubt whether Santa Claus exists. But for stock-market statisticians, there's not much debate: The year-end lift known as the Santa Claus rally is no myth.

The stock market typically posts modest, but reliable, gains in late December into the beginning of early January.

"It's pretty much like clockwork," says Jeff Hirsch, editor of the Stock Trader's Almanac, which tracks market trends. "And when it doesn't happen, it can be a very helpful warning of impending trouble."

This year the stock market began December in somewhat typical fashion with a stagnant first half of the month. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index is up just 0.6% so far in December, and the Dow Jones industrial average is down 0.2%.

That leaves room for the market to snap back by the end of the year, although stocks are still facing headwinds from lingering doubts about the economy as well as trepidation among investors about the huge gains logged so far this year. The S&P is already up 22% in 2009, the Dow 18%.

The entire period around the end of the year, though, has a bullish track record.

Consider:

— November through January tends to be the best three-month span for stocks. Over the past four decades the average gain from Nov. 20 through the end of January has been 4.2%, or an annualized rate of 23%, according to James Stack, president of InvesTech Research in Whitefish, Mont.

— December is the best single month, with the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index averaging a 1.6% gain. The first December after a bear market ends performs even better, averaging 3.1%.

— The S&P has increased an average of 1.5% during the seven trading days that start with Christmas Eve and end with the first two days in January since 1950. That's the widely recognized period for the Santa Claus rally, as first identified in 1972 by Stock Trader's Almanac founder Yale Hirsch, Jeff's father.

— Stocks went up in 12 of the last 15 of those year-end periods.

To better understand what drives the Santa Claus rally, let's look at the variety of positive factors for the stock market that usually come together around this time of the year.

The holidays are the strongest retail season of the year, giving a boost to the economy while also generating positive headlines. Year-end investment reports also tend to offer upbeat outlooks for the coming year, and often plug hot stock picks just as investors are repositioning their portfolios.

And since lots of investors are already in a good mood this time of year anyway, more people tend to be buying rather than selling around the holidays.

"It's one of the most reliable rallies of the year," says Scott Marcouiller, senior equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advisers. "The probability is very high that we get a move up before the end of this year."

Also, investors who might normally sell stocks for tax purposes late in the year could be more likely to hold off this time around. Since this stock market rally is only nine months old, any gains from stocks bought this year would be considered short-term profits by the IRS. That would mean a much higher tax rate than gains on assets held for more than a year.

Even those who aren't interested in buying stocks during the holiday season would do well to keep an eye on the market. In years when there hasn't been enough enthusiasm for a Santa Claus rally, it's often been a sign that turmoil lies ahead.

After 1999, for example, when there was no Santa Claus rally, the market tanked in 2000. And a late-year drop two years ago was a forerunner to a disastrous 2008.

Some market experts take dim views of trends based on the calendar. But the Santa Claus rally still has plenty of believers on Wall Street.

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