The county’s latest bingo parlor opened this month with a resounding ka-ching, the kind that comes with a place capable of generating $60 million a year or perhaps many times that.
That’s an eye-popping number for a bingo parlor a game more often associated with musty church halls but the $20 million Hawaiian Gardens Bingo Club isn’t your average affair.
Though its interior is outfitted with plastic chairs and simple tables, there are rows and rows of them. All told, the parlor spans 24,000 square feet, seats 800 and is expected to draw players throughout Los Angeles County and beyond.
More important: It’s big enough to become a leading center for the big revolution: electronic bingo machines, which can multiply a parlor’s revenues 10 times or more. However, electronic bingo machines are banned. But maybe not for long.
“It doesn’t happen very often (that big bingo parlors are built) because not too many charities have the money to do this,” said Don Carrier, publisher of the Bingo Bugle, which covers the industry in Southern California and Nevada.
The Norwalk Boulevard parlor, owned by the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation, replaces a cramped storefront the club had occupied since the late 1980s next to its sister Hawaiian Gardens Casino, owned by the foundation’s creator.
He is Irving Moskowitz, a reclusive Miami physician who has been controversial in the past over his alleged use of gambling profits to support West Bank Israeli settlers.
But that controversy has faded in recent years, and Moskowitz’s latest gaming venture is drawing more attention for what it signifies for the formerly moribund bingo industry.
The opening is the latest example of a reviving industry that once brought in $600 million a year statewide, but by 2002 had dwindled from nearly 600 parlors to fewer than 50 statewide.
Today, however, there are 59 bingo operations in Los Angeles County alone as the operations have spread from church halls to other non-profits, some of which installed electronic bingo machines before they were recently banned by state law.
But with or without the machines, the new parlor is being counted on by the foundation and the city of Hawaiian Gardens, which shares in the revenue to boost a recent decline in foundation revenues as the economy has soured.
The parlor, spread out on six and a half acres at the site of a long-closed home improvement store, is better equipped to compete against several flashy Indian casinos that have opened within a few hours’ drive.
“I think (the new club) will add the impetus to get our numbers back up,” said Irving Moskowitz’s wife, Cherna, who attended the Nov. 18 grand opening of the club. “We hope to fill it up.”
Irving Moskowitz did not attend the event and was not made available for comment.
Indian opposition
The club has been drawing up to 400 players a night since it opened Nov. 11, but has room for lots more and could be a perfect venue for electronic bingo machines.
A Moskowitz foundation spokesman said the club has no plans to install them. However, patrons attending last week’s grand opening were peppered with flashing messages on several overhead video monitors announcing that electronic bingo was “Coming Soon!”
Since the beginning of the decade, the $8 billion Indian gaming industry has held a virtual monopoly on the use of slot machines, which voters overwhelmingly approved for use in Indian casinos in 2000. As a result, those clubs, which operate mostly in rural areas and share their profits with the state, have a competitive edge over non-Indian card clubs and bingo parlors in which slots are illegal.
The advent of electronic bingo, however, threatens to undermine that edge. The machines that had been in use in California allow players to store their cards electronically and then simply punch in called numbers, with the computer determining if a player reaches bingo. That allows aficionados to play far more bingo cards than they can manually.
After appearing in bingo clubs throughout the state, including facilities in Whittier and Torrance, the legality of the machines was challenged by Indian gaming interests.
“It’s an extremely dangerous development,” Howard Dickstein, an attorney representing several big gaming tribes, told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a recent article. If electronic bingo is not “stopped in its tracks soon,” he said, “it’s going to lead to slot machines in urban areas.”
A spokeswoman for the California Nations Indian Gaming Association was said to be at a convention in Las Vegas and could not be reached for comment. Dickstein also could not be reached for comment.
This summer, a federal judge agreed to allow charities and non-profits to continue operating the machines while their legal status is sorted out. But a new state law passed Sept. 30 that goes into effect Jan. 1 outlaws their use. That has prompted a group of plaintiffs representing charitable organizations, a game manufacturer and others to go to federal court in Sacramento to have the law overturned.
There is a lot of money involved, despite the traditionally small bingo stakes.
The Moskowitz Foundation reported gross bingo revenues of $37 million in 2006, according to the foundation’s most recently available Form 990, a financial statement non-profits must file with the Internal Revenue Service. Given its greater capacity, the new bingo hall could generate $60 million in revenues. And, of course, much more if the machines were installed.
Jonathan Stein, a Santa Monica lawyer representing several distributors and manufacturers of electronic bingo equipment, estimates that the machines can be 10 to 30 times more lucrative than traditional bingo games.
“It gives a much better entertainment experience at a time when people need a faster moving game to keep them interested,” said Stein regarding the machines. He estimates bingo machines transform $30 bingo players into $100 players while magnifying a facility’s patronage by a factor of six.
In traditional bingo, he said, “a person can scan only six cards after the numbers are called out; beyond that their eyes can’t move. A computer can scan maybe 600 cards; they have more opportunities to win.”
One of the biggest winners in the traditional game is the City of Hawaiian Gardens, a tiny metropolis of less than a square mile bordering Orange County; it derives 75 percent of its annual $22 million budget from the bingo club and Moskowitz’s nearby casino, said City Manager Ernesto Marquez.
Recently, the bingo operation alone ponied up $500,000 for a public library and $1.5 million for a new community sports complex. And, with the opening of the new facility, Marquez expects city revenues will be boosted by at least another $350,000 a year.
Dedicated players
For most of the patrons inhabiting the club on an average weeknight, however, all this doesn’t seem to matter. What they like is that the new building has a large outdoor nonsmoking patio, expanded kitchen facilities and is very spacious.
“They can play all night,” club spokesman Sal Flores said. “Some people win three or four times.”
The parlor offers $250 jackpots for each game. Bingo cards cost $1 and patrons can play as many as they want per game.
One of them recently was Vivian Smallwood, 75, of Norwalk, who said she loves sitting amidst the rows of tables inhabited by intense-looking players.
“I think it’s very nice,” said Smallwood, regarding the new club. “It’s not as cold as the old place. It’s very spacious and very clean.”
“I’ve turned out to be a regular,” said Teresa Oelkers, a Garden Grove bank teller, who admits her bingo playing has become a habit. “It’s very addictive.”
