John Rowland was also a big proponent of building a casino in Bridgeport. It was fear for his Atlantic City casinos that first brought Donald Trump to the Bridgeport table in the 1990s, hooking up with then Mayor Joe Ganim as his local political muscle, as he proposed a theme park that might morph into a casino. Maybe most important, the business prospects for a Bridgeport casino are much worse today, given the opening of a second casino in Connecticut and many more in Pennsylvania and New York in the decades since.Ī Fairfield County casino hardly would be the home run it seemed like it could be in 1995, with nearby New Yorkers then starved of other options outside Atlantic City. The logistical problem, too, of voiding the tribal/state agreement that provides hundreds of millions from reservation slot machines, still exists today. That is still the toxic political environment for anyone proposing a casino in Bridgeport today.
