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Unpopular Slot Lounge Will Open in Vancouver

The community of Hastings Park failed in its eleventh-hour attempt to block the opening of a new slot machine lounge in the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia. On Thursday, August 14th, the Supreme Court of Canada shut down an application by the Hastings Park Conservancy group to appeal the planned opening of a slots parlor at the Hastings Racecourse horse racing track, which has been a fixture of the community for years. The appeal was the Hastings park citizens’ last-ditch chance to block the opening of the much-ballyhooed slot machine lounge, which they believe will constitute a blight on the neighborhood.

At nine in the morning of Friday, August 15th, a slot machine lounge casino boasting six hundred machines opened for the first time at the Hastings Racecourse. The conservancy group had fought the opening of the lounge every step of the way with every gambit possible. The conservancy was originally enraged by the Hastings Park City Council’s decision to rezone land in the city to allow for the building of the slot machine lounge and allow the installation of the unpopular machines. The group went all the way to the province’s Supreme Court in their desperation to bar the casino from opening, but they were unsuccessful.

The afternoon before the slots machine lounge opened for business, Conservancy Board member David Bornman expressed frustration that the group had exhausted all possibilities in trying to keep the unpopular casino out. Bornman expressed the group’s continued belief that the Council had no right to rezone the land in the first place. He stated that the Board was concerned that the casino would only lead to further “degradation” of neighborhoods surrounding it, which are already among the poorest in the city.

Back to September 2008 Archive.