Should Galveston roll the dice on gambling?
Vic Maceo remembers learning to fish off the back of the Balinese Room back in the late 1950s, just before Attorney General Will Wilson's crackdown ended gambling at that famous Galveston nightclub.
"My father took me out there," Maceo, 59, recalls. "He was dressed in a suit. He went everywhere in a suit. There was a big spotlight out back shining into the water to attract speckled trout. He took me to one of the guys in the kitchen and said, 'Teach him to fish.' That was my first fishing trip with my father."
In those days, the name Maceo was synonymous with gambling in Galveston. Vic Maceo's grandfather, Frank, was the younger brother of Sam and Rose Maceo, two Sicilian brothers who ran the Balinese Room, Hollywood Dinner Club, Turf Athletic Club and other establishments from the '20s to the '50s.
It was a heady time in Galveston, with stars such as Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee coming to play the Balinese Room. Galveston Isle magazine, of which Sam Maceo was publisher and cousin-by-marriage Anthony Fertitta was managing editor, called the city the Playground of the South and rhapsodized about the Pleasure Pier, an amusement park that opened in 1948 on the 25th Street Pier with rides, arcades and an air-conditioned ballroom.
Visitors flocked to Galveston by train, many staying at the Hotel Galvez, where Sam Maceo lived in the penthouse. The city was thriving. There wasn't much violent crime. The Maceos — especially Sam, who contributed a lot to charity —- were beloved citizens.
"I can imagine what it must have looked like, with all the lights," says historian Casey Greene, head of special collections at Galveston's Rosenberg Library. "The Maceos knew how to do it correctly. They ran a clean operation. Men wore coats and ties, and women wore dresses. It was classy. I wish I had been able to visit Galveston in those days. Imagine the excitement of having a national figure come to town. We don't have many anymore."
Today's Galveston, though still popular with tourists because of its history and attractions such as Moody Gardens and Schlitterbahn, gets an occasional touring act such as Gladys Knight or the Oak Ridge Boys at its Grand Opera House, but the scene is far more bucolic than glamorous. And although it is recovering, Galveston is still suffering from the one-two punch of Hurricane Ike in 2008, followed by an economic withering. That's why many in Galveston — including the city's Chamber of Commerce — are hoping the Texas Legislature will legalize casino gambling by local option in Texas. (The chamber took a poll, and 79 percent of its members favored gambling.)
If such a bill did pass and Galveston voters chose to accept casinos, what sort of Galveston will we visit in the future? That depends on whom you ask.
Although he says he has no interest in returning to his family's former business, Maceo, the retired longtime chief of Galveston's beach patrol who now works rewriting policy manuals for the sheriff's department, is in favor of gambling in Galveston. He envisions not a long lineup of casinos along Seawall Boulevard, but just a few upscale ones.
"I don't think anybody in Texas wants a Las Vegas or an Atlantic City," Maceo says. "Maybe we'd have a Monte Carlo-style casino at the base of the Strand (the main shopping district) — small and upscale. And then maybe a destination resort on Seawall, a place for families to go and vacation." As an example of such a casino, he cited L'auberge du Lac, an upscale Lake Charles, La., resort and casino that also has a golf course and water park.
"The worst thing anybody can see is a busload of elderly people, and you give them a $5 chip and a peanut butter sandwich and bring them in, and they gamble for two hours, then you take them home. That's exactly what we don't want," Maceo says.
He looks at casinos as a way of giving locals jobs and bringing tax revenue to Galveston and to the state.
"It's not going to fix the state budget, but it's still going to be an industry the state doesn't have," he says. "All I'm saying is, let people vote."
What do gambling opponents envision?
"Keep the alternate universe of 'It's a Wonderful Life' in mind," says Galveston money manager Harris "Shrub" Kempner, referencing the movie in which James Stewart's character visits his hometown as it would be if he hadn't been born: full of raucous nightlife and ruin.
Like Maceo, Kempner was born on the island. He is president of Kempner Capital Management and a member of the Galveston County Economic Development Alliance.
"My objections aren't religious," Kempner says. "They have to do with economic and social effect."
Casinos in these days would not be the benign business they were last century, he says.
"The old casinos were a local product, small with local sensibilities," Kempner says. "The new casinos will not be off-shore. They will be two or three times as large as anything we have now. They will come down on top of the single-family homes. Galveston would lose a substantial part of its population, and the place would become like Atlantic City. They've had crime and corruption and people don't live there. This would be devastating."
Maceo disagrees, saying the type of development envisioned for Galveston would be different from Atlantic City's casino world.
"It's the mentality that you approach it with," he says. "If you're going to do it, do it right. The last thing a first-class casino wants is crime."
If gambling was such a great thing for Galveston, why didn't it last?
Well, it was illegal, of course. But law enforcement had for years turned a blind eye. Occasionally, there would be a raid. But the Balinese, in particular, was tough to raid because of the long walkway out to the gambling portion of the nightclub. By the time the law got there, there was no gambling to be seen.
Greene thinks Life magazine helped end the era.
Writer Henry Suydam went to Galveston in 1955 to do a story on the city for Life. His visit to gambling clubs led to an encounter with Turf Athletic Club manager Anthony Fertitta that ended in Fertitta either slugging Suydam or tapping him lightly, depending on whose story you believe.
Suydam's resulting story on Aug. 15, 1955, began: "The city of Galveston was founded in 1817 as a sin camp, and ever since it has made an industry of sin." It was just a short story with a couple of pages of pictures, but Greene thinks the national attention galvanized the attorney general, who doubtless read it and, like Captain Renault in "Casablanca," was shocked — shocked — to find there was gambling going on.
If gambling returns to Galveston, who will run the casinos? Not a Maceo, Vic Maceo is quick to say.
"The ones old enough to know the business have passed," he says, "and we don't have the financial ability. But I've got 50 acres on the Seawall that a casino can buy."
The wealthy branch of the old casino family is the Fertittas, especially Tilman Fertitta, CEO of the Landry's Restaurant empire and owner of Las Vegas' Golden Nugget and a lot of hotels and restaurants in Galveston. He is currently tearing down the old Flagship Hotel on the 25 th Street pier, where he plans to put an amusement park evoking the old Pleasure Pier, something like the one on California's Santa Monica Pier.
Talk has swirled on the island for years that Fertitta is interested in opening a casino in Galveston, though he has steadfastly refused to talk about it. Maceo can't see Fertitta opening a Galveston casino anytime soon; Fertitta just took his Landry's enterprises private and would need to raise a lot of capital.
The Convention and Visitors Bureau is careful not to weigh in on the gambling matter.
"Our position is, if it passes we'll embrace it," says RoShelle Gaskins, public relations manager. "If it doesn't, we'll continue the way we are." Galvestonians are eagerly waiting to see what the Legislature will do.
"I'm neither pro-gambling nor anti-," Greene says. "But the economy is not good, and gambling is such a part of our history. It's in keeping with what Galveston is. We've always marched to a different drummer."