You don’t read too much about casino owner Don Barden in the Las Vegas or gambling media, but he’s got a nice-sized casino company and great prospects for the future, particularly in Pittsburgh. The NY Times has a short piece detailing his rise to wealth and moderate fame:
Don H. Barden could have scheduled the groundbreaking for his $450 million casino on his 64th birthday, Dec. 20, if he wanted. After all, he owns what is projected to be the most lucrative of Pennsylvania’s 14 slots casino licenses.
But already irritated by a year’s worth of delays, Mr. Barden, the country’s only African-American owner of a national gambling company, decided against that.
“I didn’t want to lose two weeks of the good weather” for construction, he said before the ceremony on Tuesday along the banks of the Ohio River, where his Majestic Star casino will rise.
It was a landmark day for Mr. Barden, a soft-spoken, sometimes prickly Horatio Alger figure who grew up poor with 12 siblings in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, the son of auto workers and the great-grandson of a freed slave. The new casino is projected to nearly double his Detroit company’s annual revenue, pushing it over $1 billion.
“This is a great day for our company, and this is a great day for me,” Mr. Barden told a cheering crowd of about 300 local officials, friends and family.
For Casino Owner, Winning a License Was Not a Matter of Luck – New York Times
As you’ll see when you click through, Barden says that by doing his homework and picking an optimal casino site, he virtually guaranteed himself a license in Pittsburgh. It’s a smart approach. When it’s a city-wide monopoly, siting becomes one of the crucial parts of any bid.