Gary, Indiana, has always epitomized some defining aspect of American life. A company town founded in 1906 by United States Steel and named for Elbert Gary, chairman of the board, it became synonymous with the brawny steel industry, its mills a magnet for the foreign-born.
The city coffers are bare. The present city budget is $42 million, but “I don’t know if it’s ever been balanced,” says Barnes. “To clear things up we always have to make layoffs and have reductions in force.” The buses don’t run on Sunday. Abandoned housing abounds. The streets are potholed, the sidewalks are crumbling, and one swath of the city seems altogether empty of street signs.
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Their two boats, scheduled to open in April, will be located at Buffington Harbor on Gary’s west side. According to Barnes, these floating casinos will create 2,500 jobs. In addition, state law will oblige their operators to turn over to the city 8 percent of gross revenues, plus a head tax of $1 a customer, an amount Barnes estimates will run to $18 million a year. The developers will also pay the city $10 million for the right to purchase land around the boats. Trump, meanwhile, intends to construct a hotel alongside the casinos, in an area that could explode economically if a consortium of northwest Indiana businessmen persuades the Bears to locate a new stadium nearby. And Barden, who seems willing to go it alone after the loss of two partners, has committed himself to renovating the shuttered Union Station downtown.
Last April, in a deal designed to avert the takeover of O’Hare and Midway by Republican legislators in Springfield, Mayor Daley signed a pact lumping Gary’s tiny airport into a bistate airport authority. Besides a guarantee of $1.2 million a year from Chicago, Gary received reason to hope that the airfield now used only by charters and private planes would become the region’s third commercial airport.
The job of mayor pays $45,000 a year, plus an additional $15,000 the chief executive earns as trustee of the sanitary district. At least for King and Williams, the job would mean a loss of earnings, but Indiana law gives the mayor of a city such as Gary a lot of power, and all three candidates said they welcomed the opportunity to use it.
King said that Gary under his reign could flower like Cleveland, whose downtown renaissance makes it the nation’s reigning comeback kid. “Now there’s a city with seemingly insurmountable problems that’s done a turnaround,” he said. “Gary has to develop the same unity, a collective selfishness, to work together around the common thread of self-interest.”
