Because of 20 people 21 years ago — and one person now — electronic skill games may not be starting up again in the Roanoke Valley.
That’s one of several upshots from Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s proposed amendments to the legislation that would legalize the games. One of the many provisos in his amendments — which critics called a wholesale rewrite — is that games would be banned within 35 miles of any casino, racetrack or “satellite facility.”
The casino part is clear enough. Virginia has three in operation now — in Bristol, Danville and Portsmouth — with a fourth underway in Norfolk and a possible fifth in Petersburg, subject to a referendum.
Bristol officials seem quite fine with that 35-mile ban. “I fully support the governor’s amendment to the skill game legislation,” city manager Randy Eads told Cardinal News. Danville officials said they’d tried to limit the proliferation of the games anyway.
That 35-mile ban becomes more significant around Richmond and in Hampton Roads.
According to Google Maps, it’s a 23.5-mile drive from the Rivers Casino in Portsmouth to the Virginia Beach fishing pier on the boardwalk. It’s an 18.2-mile drive from the future HeadWaters Casino in Norfolk to the Virginia Beach boardwalk. That means the governor’s amendment would eliminate any skill games in Virginia Beach. That’s significant because data from 2022, when the games were briefly legal and taxed, showed that Virginia Beach generated more revenue from skill games than anywhere else in Virginia.
If the governor’s amendment holds up in the General Assembly’s reconvened session next Wednesday — and there’s no guarantee it will — that would mean no skill games anywhere in Hampton Roads.
Here’s a 35-mile radius from the casino in Portsmouth:
Here’s a 35-miles radius from the future casino in Norfolk:
You’ll see that both extend westward out into Isle of Wight County and also bring in the southern tip of the Eastern Shore, even though that requires paying a toll to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel ($21 from May 15 to Sept. 15, $18 the rest of the year). Obviously Virginia law won’t extend into North Carolina, but the software I’m using draws a circle anyway.
While we’re having fun drawing circles, here’s the 35-mile exclusion zone around the Bristol casino.
And here’s the exclusion zone around the Danville casino:
We don’t know where a potential Petersburg casino might be located, but using the address of one proposal, the Wagner Road exit on Interstate 64, this is what a 35-mile exclusion zone would look like.
As you can see, all of Richmond would be barred from having skill games so we’ve now knocked out two of Virginia’s biggest metro areas. Let’s keep going.
Next, let’s look at the exclusion zone around Virginia’s only racetrack: Colonial Downs in New Kent County.
From this we see that it doesn’t matter whether Petersburg gets a casino or not, Richmond is already blocked by the racetrack’s 35-mile zone. That banned zone also brings in part of the Northern Neck.
Critics contend that these skill games are really just “neighborhood slot machines,” so it’s understandable that the places operating lots of slot machines — casinos — wouldn’t like these games. While they’d like no skill games at all, if we’re going to have them, the casinos would like skill game operators to play by the same rules they do — which accounts for the heavy $9,000 licensing fee the governor wants. Of course, a casino can afford that more easily than a neighborhood convenience store, but that’s the logic behind Youngkin’s amendments — that if convenience stores are going to act like mini-casinos, they need to follow casino-like rules.
In the case of Bristol and Danville, those communities have voted to allow casinos and have embraced their respective casinos as economic drivers — it’s pretty clear why they don’t want convenience door games cutting into the profit of the casinos, because some of that profit turns into tax revenue for the community. We can have a robust debate about whether we’re really talking about the same market — is the long-haul trucker who stops at a truck stop outside Bristol to gas up and play a few games really likely to go to the casino anyway? — but this is the logic.
Now, though, let’s look at those “satellite” facilities. Those are the seven Rosie’s Gaming Emporiums, more commonly known as off-track betting parlors. Let’s see who gets blocked by them.
One is at Colonial Downs, so we’ve already covered that. Another is in Richmond, on Midlothian Turnpike. The exclusion zone for that brings in much of the territory already banned by Colonial Downs and that prospective casino in Petersburg, but just in case you’re on the fringes and are curious about your location, here it is.
There’s a Rosie’s in Hampton. You’ll see that even if there were no casino south of the James, all of Hampton Roads would be excluded anyway, along with part of the Eastern Shore.
There’s also a Rosie’s in Emporia. Here’s what that exclusion zone looks like. Former NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler owns a truck stop at Emporia. He had sued to keep the games legal. He thought he would benefit from this legislation — but the governor’s amendment would keep his games shuttered.
Martinsville and much of Henry County is already blocked by Danville’s casino, but there is a Rosie’s in Collinsville. When we look at that facility’s exclusion zone, we see it runs up into Roanoke County.
Here’s a close-up that shows the Collinsville exclusion zone running north to the Hunting Hills section of Roanoke County.
Hold whatever thoughts you have about the Roanoke Valley. There’s a method to my geographical madness here. Let’s do one more before we return to the Roanoke Valley and the situation I teased at the beginning of this column. Dumfries in Prince William County has a Rosie’s. That facility’s exclusion zone knocks out most of Northern Virginia — so that means the state’s three biggest metro areas — Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Richmond — would all be barred from skill games.
Finally, let’s bring this home — well, home for those of us in the Roanoke Valley. There’s a Rosie’s in Vinton. Here’s what a 35-mile radius looks like:
That zone locks out the entire Roanoke Valley, plus Blacksburg and Christiansburg in the New River Valley. It goes far enough east to bring in New London and part of Forest in Bedford County, just outside Lynchburg. It also brings in southern Covington but not the northern part of the city, which means some stores there would be allowed to host the games while others wouldn’t. That means an east-west trucker who pulls off south rather than north on Interstate 64 in Covington will find himself unable to play these games because of a Rosie’s several mountain ranges away that he will never see. Consider this all a geography lesson.
Again, if you’re against these games, you may be thinking these 35-mile exclusion zones don’t go far enough. A few philosophical questions, though. Just because the towns of Dumfries and Vinton have approved an off-track betting facility, why should their decision hold sway over people in other localities? The population of Dumfries is 5,794, yet its decision in 2020 to allow Rosie’s — coupled with the governor’s proposed amendment — means that Fairfax County, population 1.1 million and counting, wouldn’t have a choice about whether to allow these games. Is the license granted to Rosie’s in Dumfries so important that it’s worth denying 1.1 million people in a neighboring locality the right to decide for themselves whether they want these games — and, more importantly, the tax revenue that would come with them?
The same question applies to the Rosie’s in Vinton. In that case, the referendum in 2003 was hotly contested and was decided by just 20 votes — 958 yes, 938 no. Two decades and one governor’s decision later, that means Vinton’s vote to allow Rosie’s blocks the entire Roanoke Valley and part of the New River Valley, and even part of the Alleghany Highlands, from having skill games. Elections have consequences, and here are the far-reaching consequences of an election two decades ago (plus one three years ago).
So with all these exclusion zones, just which localities would be able to have these games? The big exceptions would be Lynchburg, Charlottesville, the Shenandoah Valley — and Wytheville. Even they are a Swiss cheese because the governor’s amendments also carves out local exclusion zones of 2,500 feet around schools, day care centers and places of worship.
We’ve all seen those signs: Last rest stop for so many miles. Maybe along Interstate 81 we’ll start seeing those signs for skill games.
UPDATE, April 11, 11 a.m.: There’s some confusion this morning about whether the Shenandoah Downs harness racing track in Woodstock is covered under this legislation. Just in case it is, I’ve added maps for that below the others.
If Shenandoah Downs is counted — and there’s some question about that, which I’ll try to resolve — then that facility’s exclusion zone would knock out the Shenandoah Valley south to Harrisonburg:
And if Shenandoah Downs is covered, then here’s what the exclusion zone in the northern part of the state would look like:
