BETHLEHEM -- A casino operator has become the majority partner in the team that owns and plans to redevelop the Bethlehem Works property on South Side.
City officials confirmed Tuesday that would-be slots operator Las Vegas Sands Inc., owner of the Venetian casinos, now is the majority partner in BethWorks Now.
City Councilwoman Jean Belinski said she fears the publicly traded Las Vegas Sands Inc. will be dedicated more to its shareholders than to the dream of reusing the former Bethlehem Steel land.
Belinski said the Venetian casinos owner owns 55 percent of the BethWorks Now team, making it the controlling partner. Tony Hanna, the city's director of community and economic development, said his understanding is that Las Vegas Sands bought the majority interest.
Hanna said he is not worried, judging by the company's track record of developing retail and other uses alongside gambling facilities.
"I think it's a total comprehensive plan that they're proposing," Hanna told council.
Belinski was not put at ease Tuesday.
"They can all say, 'It's going to be all right,' " she said after council's meeting. "But things have a way of changing."
Mayor John Callahan said after the meeting he had heard an update of the BethWorks Now plan earlier Tuesday. Representatives of partner Newmark & Company Real Estate Inc., of New York, said the redevelopment's residential component has grown to as many as 1,200 homes.
"They are going to do a mixed-use project very much in keeping with what was originally proposed," Callahan said.
The third BethWorks Now partner, Upper Saucon Township resident and Phillipsburg attorney Michael Perrucci, has served as local spokesman for the project but was unavailable for comment late Tuesday night.
The BethWorks Now development has been touted as an $879 million redevelopment of 135 acres of the heart of former Bethlehem Steel property. Perrucci has said slots would drive the project and accomplish the redevelopment faster than if slots were not included, but he has insisted the project would proceed irrespective of gambling.
BethWorks Now plans to apply for one of 14 slots parlor licenses that will be given out, possibly as early as 2006, by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. A challenge to the legality of the slots-enabling law, Act 71, is before the state Supreme Court.
Also Tuesday, council rejected a plan to rezone about 20 properties on Easton Avenue between Rodgers Street and West Boulevard and Hart Street. The proposed change was from residential to commercial.
The city planning and zoning bureau put forth the idea, recommended for passage by the city planning commission, to match the commercial uses on most of the properties. The residents of the area protested the plan at a public hearing April 19, and no council members sponsored the change for passage Tuesday.
In another development issue affecting the neighborhood in the city's northeast section, Rodgers Street resident Rebecca Dean criticized the scheduling of a meeting for Thursday afternoon on plans to build a 24-hour Wawa gas station and market at East Boulevard and Easton Avenue.
Dean said the 3:30 p.m. meeting, set up by the city, will force working residents interested in the plan to skip either work or the session. Residents don't want the Wawa, which replaced plans for an Eckerd drug store on the lot.
Planning Commissioner Lawrence Krauter asked at the commission's April 14 Wawa review that the meeting be held so Wawa representatives could work toward a compromise with the residents. The representatives voiced doubt any further compromise could be reached beyond aesthetic concessions they had made.
Council President J. Michael Schweder suggested Thursday's meeting be rescheduled, saying he understood city precedent to be that afternoon meetings were taboo.
Hanna, who is supervisor of planning and zoning, said he agreed and the meeting time would be changed. Hanna also said more invitations would be mailed, addressing Dean's concerns that only a handful of concerned citizens were notified of the meeting.
Schweder said he wants the property developer, Selvaggio Enterprises, to attend the meeting as well. Schweder said he plans to research ways to force developers to stick to their original commitments, which was to build an Eckerd in this case.
Reporter Kurt Bresswein can be reached at 610-867-5000 or by e-mail at kbresswein@express-times.com.