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Mark Freerks

State Rep. Erik Fresen hopes to present his destination gambling resorts bill to a house subcommittee on Feb. 3

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Oscar Pedro Musibay

Reporter - South Florida Business Journal

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The amended version of the House destination resorts gambling bill is set to be debated Feb. 3, just a few weeks after the Senate version made it out of its first committee.

State Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, is expected to present the bill with amendments to the Business and Consumer Affairs Subcommittee on Feb. 3, according to sources familiar with the bill. The first reading was Jan. 10, with some members pushing for a ban on Internet cafés, a limited version of gambling that has sprung up in strip shopping centers statewide. Fresen’s legislation regulated Internet cafés, but did not ban them.

State Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff’s version of the gambling bill changed dramatically by the time the Senate Committee on Regulated Industries approved it Jan. 12. Instead of limiting the licenses to South Florida, as Fresen’s bill does, it opened it up to any part of the state.

The Senate bill also sought parity for pari-mutuels by making all gambling operators pay the same tax rate, and making existing slot licenses comparable to destination resort licenses. Bogdanoff’s original bill called for new destination resort operators to pay a lower tax rate than pari-mutuels.

On Feb. 1, the non-profit neighborhood planning and development entity Town Square Neighborhood Development Corporation plans to unveil its master plan for the downtown Miami neighborhood that could include one of the proposed destination resorts.

The Genting Group has a sizeable footprint next to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts where it wants to build a new resort that would include a casino. The land they own, which combines the Miami Herald headquarters and Omni Center, is included in the Town Square plan.

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