New beach resort planned near Lisbon

As reported by globeandmail.com

Lisbon - Demolition experts have imploded two 30-year-old tower blocks south of Lisbon to clear the way for a project that is to open up Portugal's unspoiled southwest coast to large-scale tourism development.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates detonated the explosive charges to collapse the 16-storey concrete towers in Troia, a sandy peninsula 48 kilometres south of Lisbon.

Portuguese company Sonae plans to build a resort with more than 1,000 beds, a casino, meeting centre and vacation homes. Three other tourism developments are slated for construction nearby. Developers hope the region will rival the southern Algarve coast, one of Europe's top vacation destinations, but environmental groups fear the projects will ruin the countryside.

Stuart says Park City casino plan is dead
As reported by the Wichita Business Journal

Sedgwick County Commissioners Wednesday again turned down a request from Park City casino supporters for a countywide referendum on expanded gaming, a move that city's mayor says effectively kills the project.

Saying the issue had no "urgency," commissioners again turned down a request from former Wichita mayor Bob Knight, representing the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. The group wants to build a destination resort casino in Park City.

"It's over," Park City Mayor Dee Stuart says. "I took the bumper sticker off my car. Time to move on."
Knight says if the Iowa Tribe builds a casino in south central Kansas, it won't be in Sedgwick County. There's also the alternative of building a mega-casino on the tribe's reservation in northeast Kansas.

"I don't know what else to do," Knight says.

Commissioner Tim Norton called the referendum debate a "conundrum," saying, "I'd probably vote right now to put a referendum on the ballot."

However, Norton says his fellow commissioners don't see the urgency to finance a vote at about $160,000, up from earlier estimates of about $75,000.

"What we have, I think, is two widely conflicting views at work here," Norton says. "You have the far right conservative folks who think gaming will ruin society and you have the supporters who see a casino as an economic driver. In between, I think, are citizens who say, 'Just let me vote.'"

Commission Chairman Dave Unruh says the Kansas Legislature must approve gaming "before our citizens are really going to know what they're voting on.

"Right now, it appears to me that the only opportunity we face is a state-owned casino," he says. "I don't get the sense that the people want the state to operate a casino here."

Norton says the rising price tag for the referendum "made me gulp."

"This thing is going to play out however it plays out," Norton says. "There are other communities out there who feel the need for the economic stimulus that they think a casino would provide."

Stuart says her city's economic development efforts will continue.

"It's a great piece of property that's going to make a lot of money for someone," she says, of the proposed casino location at 77th Street North and I-135. "It just won't be Sedgwick County."