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| BETHLEHEM -- Stephen G. Donches rested his foot on a 5-by-5-foot piece of steel plate. Embedded in the 8-inch-thick sheet of metal were the remains of a shell fired at it during a test of battleship armor. The plate and the projectile were both made by Bethlehem Steel. That piece of industrial history, marked with a bright yellow tag that said "Save for Beth Works," was being stored in what had been Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s No. 2 machine shop. While steel-making at the plant on the city's South Side ended in 1995, its former home along the Lehigh River is again noisy. Las Vegas Sands Corp. is building a $600 million casino, hotel and conference center on the brownfields site. The gambling complex with its 3,000 slot machines is scheduled to open in spring 2009.
Simultaneously, the National Museum of Industrial History, the group that Mr. Donches heads, is raising $26 million for Phase 1 of its cultural project. The planned museum, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, will occupy about 40,000 square feet -- little more than an acre -- when it opens near the casino in the former steel company's 1913 electrical shop. The museum and casino are key elements in a $1 billion master plan for the 126-acre site with the dual goals of bringing economic opportunity to the region and preserving its past. Bethlehem, a city of 72,000 located in both Lehigh and Northampton counties, is 300 miles east of Pittsburgh. For decades, it was the home to now-bankrupt Bethlehem Steel, once the nation's second-largest steel producer. "What we are building here is an integrated resort," said Robert DeSalvio, president of Sands BethWorks, a unit of Las Vegas Sands Corp. "By offering convention facilities, retail stores, hotel rooms and celebrity chefs in our restaurants, we want to offer an attraction that reaches many different audiences. We want to be part of the larger tourism community in the Lehigh Valley." Other elements planned for the former Bethlehem Steel site include an ArtsQuest performing arts center and a studio for WLVT public television. "Visitors will come here for gaming, for entertainment, for cultural tourism," Mr. DeSalvio said.
The financial key to the project, however, remains gambling. Sands BethWorks is projecting that 5 million visitors a year -- more than 13,000 per day -- will visit its Lehigh Valley casino. "Since we are building only 300 hotel rooms, the bulk of those visitors will be day trippers," Mr. DeSalvio said. While those numbers seem ambitious, results from the six slots parlors that have opened so far in Pennsylvania offer reasons for optimism. Spectrum Gaming, an industry research firm, reported last month that Pennsylvania casinos held four of the top five spots in gross revenues per slot machine in the nation. |
But why come to Bethlehem rather than to Philadelphia or Pocono casinos? "We will offer a total resort package," Mr. DeSalvio said. Bethlehem is already home to major cultural events, including Musikfest and the Bach Festival, he said. Shows and concerts at the Sands BethWorks' 3,800-seat events center and shopping at its 150,000 square feet of retail space will give visitors additional reasons for coming to the area, he said. Mr. DeSalvio was interviewed about the casino project at his temporary headquarters in a former Bethlehem Steel office building, less than a mile from the casino construction site. The home of the National Museum of Industrial History, one of the Sands BethWorks partners, is located just across Bethlehem's Third Street in a former bank. Visitors to the planned industrial museum will not be looking at just old equipment in glass-fronted display cases, Mr. Donches promised. "When we say industrial history, we mean it in its broadest terms," he said. "It's not going to be just an iron and steel museum. What we hope to capture is the record of achievement of all of American industry." About $14 million has been raised so far toward the $26 million needed for the first phase of the project, he said. Much of the first floor of the new museum will be devoted to re-creating the 1876 U.S. Centennial exhibition that was first mounted in Philadelphia, then displayed for many years in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building in Washington, D.C. The second floor of the former electrical shop will have interactive exhibits devoted to industries ranging from textiles to communications. Mr. Donches still is hoping for a first-phase museum opening in mid-2009, shortly after Sands BethWorks inaugurates its casino. "Meeting that target date will depend on fund raising," he said. No one coming to the site will miss its connections to the steel industry, Mr. Donches and Mr. DeSalvio agreed.
Five black blast furnaces, the largest about 20 stories high, will remain the tallest objects on the former plant property. "They are super icons," Mr. Donches said. When visitors drive up to the main entrance to the casino, their vehicles will pass under the steel skeleton of the plant's giant ore crane. Poster-sized industrial photographs and examples of original steel-making equipment will be displayed in all the Sands BethWorks buildings. The new structures are being designed to blend with the site's original industrial architecture, Mr. DeSalvio said. Mr. Donches, who worked for many years for Bethlehem Steel, already is looking beyond the project's first phase. Plans for a second phase, which will concentrate on the story of steel industry, will be able to make use of original equipment and buildings. He offered a backstage look into the "Blowing Engine Building," a structure that houses 17 giant internal combustion engines designed to pump heated air into blast furnaces. They were used in steelmaking from the 1920s through the early 1970s. Standing next to one of the engines, Mr. Donches was dwarfed by its 18-foot-tall, 100-ton flywheel. "Their parts were all forged here, from raw steel that was made here," he said. "This is what American industry was all about."
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