Topic starter
03/11/2009 12:09 am
03/11/2009 4:18 am
ABS does the Hull exams on the Admiral.
This announcement may be smoke and mirrors (personal opinion only). The casino company has a lock on the number of licenses in the State after the last general election when they financed the lions share of the monies spent on advertising for the public vote to overturn the loss limit in Missouri. Loss limit overturned & casino licenses frozen with that company owning three.
The casino company proposed replacing the Admiral with a barge. State gaming commission decided that if the casino company wanted to do that they would have to apply for a new license for the barge. No transfer of license allowed.
So, reading between the lines there may be a bit of "posturing" going on between the casino company and the state gaming commission.
As a side light the Admiral is closed for a few days due to high water.
03/11/2009 2:26 pm
ADMIRAL's Heyday
For better or worse, the fast-fading gamlin' boat era has been a most interest time in river history and should, one day, be recorded for posterity. A fleet of mighty fine boats were built, and a few, like the ADMIRAL, were allowed a longer lease on life, while many good river people were put to work on them.
It's just a shame that the boats have been allowed to "cruise" dockside or go ashore when it was our venue, the river, that made gambling "respectable", and thus legal to operate in states where it was normally outside their laws.
Check out this link to the ADMIRAL'S Heyday:
Look Back: The Admiral's Heyday | St. Louis Post-Dispatch
03/11/2009 6:12 pm
ADMIRAL
Its interesting that the casino company can now consider repairing the hull, which they determined a while back to be beyond repair - but that was when they wanted to build the new barge and before the monkeywrench was thrown into those plans. What, other than a completely new hull, can be done to make her shipshape? Also befuddling is the fact that they'd want to keep a losing casino going - I find it hard to believe any casino would be losing money. I haven't been on the ADMIRAL since Jimmy Swift's memorial weekend, and it was pretty trashy back then. I get the feeling that they have revisited the Streckfus days: the SAINT PAUL was the boat for the lower class, while the JS was the DELUXE boat for the genteel set. Prices certainly reflected those distinctions too. So is this gambling company trying to keep the riffraff out of the Luminiere, or what?
And can anyone ID any of the officers in the PD pix in Shipyard's link?