By Natalie Zarowny & Clay LePard
nzarowny@cbs4qc.com clepard@cbs4qc.com
It was a public interview in front of community leaders, and anyone else who wanted to listen.
They were three companies with three very different proposals.
Ingenus Management started the day with a bid to build two casinos. One would be a smaller boutique casino downtown, the other, a larger hotel casino combination off I–80 and 280.
"From a gaming perspective and from a further development standpoint, we really need to be in a location where you have high traffic, early access, and expandability," said Ken Mimmack with Ingenus Management.
Ingenus was the only company that had an element of the casino not in the downtown area. Next up, Restoration Saint Louis.
Their plan involves restoring a downtown historic building, just like they did with the Hotel Black Hawk.
"It's immensely exciting to me, in fact, it's humbling to be able to take a Daniel Burnham piece of art, because these buildings are pieces of art in the final analysis, and give it new life," said Amrit Gill of Restoration Saint Louis.
The hotel/casino combo would fill an entire city block between Brady and Main.
And finally, Atrium Holdings. They own the Radisson downtown, and would incorporate the existing hotel into their plan.
They said the first phase would be done as soon as late 2013.
"No one else in the marketplace can move that quickly, because of the adaptability of the space," said Daniel Abernethy of Atrium Holdings.
After the meeting today, city council members went into a private session to discuss the proposals. But the final decision isn't expected for a few more weeks.
The interviews of the possible developers are just the beginning; later this afternoon, city leaders and other community members will travel to Dubuque to tour the Mystique Casino.
"We'd like the public to see how that works, ask the city administrator, ask the manager of the casino, ask the citizen group that owns the casino and hopefully learn something," says Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba.
Over the past ten years, the city of Dubuque has received nearly $100 million from the Mystique Casino to help lower property taxes.
Davenport officials will look at how the city of Dubuque works with the community-owned casino in order to get ideas for their own city-owned one.
Mayor Bill Gluba says they'd be foolish if they didn't model their plan after Dubuque's Mystique Casino.
"It's the hometown team," Gluba adds. "People go to that casino because they know when they spend some money, the money they spend, some of it goes to keep property taxes down. So we're just trying to educate the public and show them there is a perfect model 65 miles away."
They will also look at the Diamond Jo Casino, which is co-licensed to the Dubuque Racing Association but owned by Nevada-based Boyd Gaming.
We'll have more about the trip tonight on CBS 4.
