Marina City Council vote to approve change in city code to help approval of new cardroom

MARINA, Calif. (KION-TV)- DATE Jan 19, 2023, AT 4:54 PM: The Marina City Council approved an amendment to the Marina Municipal Code to get closer to a new cardroom within city limits.

The change to city code was approved 3-2 Wednesday night. The opposing voters were Mayor Pro Tem Cristina Medina Dirksen and District 1 Council Member Brian McCarthy.

The amended city code will modify the criteria for the transfer of cardroom permits and amends to remove the moratorium on new cardroom permits and clarifies there will be no more than two cardroom permits.

UPDATE OCTOBER 17 AT 11:29 AM: The decision to add a second cardroom in Marina will have to wait again.

After our report aired last week, The Marina City Council is postponing its decision to approve a second cardroom to Tuesday, Dec. 6. The City Council is looking for more public discussion about adding a cardroom at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

ORIGINAL STORY

The Marina City Council will vote to approve a second cardroom to open up in town on Tuesday.

The proposed site would be next to the off-ramp from Highway 1 onto Del Monte Boulevard.

Marina’s mayor is welcoming the new cardroom, while others aren’t so sure.

Frank Calamia, the owner of the Marina club, says, “I’m very, very concerned. We used to have Mortimers across the street, they went out of business more than five years ago."

Now that the City of Marina is looking to bring back a second cardroom – Frank has concerns.

“I’m fearful, I will lose half of my employees, and I’m not going to be able to support the foundations and the kids of this town like we’ve been doing over the past years," said Calamia.

We asked Marina Mayor Bruce Delgado about this. He tells KION that adding a second cardroom could bring in 100 to 300,000 dollars in tax revenue for city services.

"If a second cardroom comes in and is different than the first card room, I could see how that might have a positive impact overall on city revenues," said Delgato.

But does a second cardroom have the potential to contribute more money to local nonprofits?

"It depends on how generous the second cardroom would be and what effect the second cardroom would have on the first cardroom’s ability to donate to nonprofits," said Delgato.

In 2019, Marina Police Chief Tina Nieto sent a letter to the bureau of gambling control. In this letter, she said, “in communities such as ours, cardroom table tax revenue provides for a substantial portion of the local budget.”

“If a second cardroom is very successful, what does that mean for the city's ability to provide services? Does it give us one more policeman per year? Does it give us one more firefighter per year? Does it give us some money to, it probably would cost about $150,000 a year, to do a much better job maintaining our sports fields, said Delgato."

The city feels that this second cardroom’s impact will be the opposite. The changes are part of Marina’s downtown vibrancy project.

“When you build a big ol' place like that, it’s not just the cardroom here, the marina club, that is going to hurt, it’s all the other restaurateurs in town because he’ll suck away all the tourists. They won’t even come into town," said Calamia.

Calamia wants to keep Marina small and not become a city like Morgan Hill.

“We're not trying to create a Taj Mahal that's so expensive that the Vietnamese fisher-people and the mom with two jobs and kids, you know, increasingly get pushed out. And we end up looking like cities that are very different than Marina. I mean, Marina is a very precious special place," said Delgato.

We also reached out to Parkwest Casinos for comment, but they have not responded.