Betting on ALCO

A once great and wealthy manufacturing city has to place its hopes on a Casino to do urban renewal. 

I hope that this is not another Atlantic City.

I would have preferred a railroad museum.

Jim

Me too!

As I recall the Alco plant site was on both sides of Erie Blvd.  Sort of the other end of town from GE. The area looked like it was populated with light industry. Unlike the Baldwin plant site, it looked clean and functional.  I am surprised that a casino would be built there. It was a long way from the freeway.  I do not think it would be a very good location for a locomotive plant either.  Not the best rail or road access and on a slight hill.   Schenectady is an interesting city with some beautiful buildings and lots of history. The Schenectady Musuem has a large collection of GE documents and photographs.  A worthwhile visit for any serious historian of obsolete technology.   

A railroad museum might have been nice, but even a small casino is going to draw a heck of a lot more people and money into the area. I am hoping the casino will bring in some quality entertainment, and maybe a few restaurants. I don't gamble. Been to Las Vegas a few times, didn't spend a penny gambling.
Wasn't there a hotel in Schenetady with its restaurant set up to resemble a passenger or dining car a while back? Maybe it was a Ramada inn? What happened to it?

I hope the designers and architects incorporate some local ALCO history into the design although I wont hold my breath. From manufacturing to a casino seems to be a boiler plate stop gap economic driver. I wonder where this disposable income is generated.

This locale is not exactly a hot bed of tourism.

The area is so saturated with Casinos, three going into Mass, two in CT, NH is getting them and not two hours away in Schenectady.

Can you say epic FAIL

Ah Yes the Bellevue and Schenectady RR has a new vacation destination in its future to transport the homies too!!!!!

Man do I love Alco's   Too bad a museum wasn't built there  One thing many people forget is what Alco produced during WWII

I agree

Love it when folks refer to gambling as an "industry". Guess there are a lot of folks nowadays who have never seen a real industry that makes things.

      Anyway, Alco went under in 1969, but the last vestige of the business was bought by White Motor Corporation (mfr of White heavy duty trucks) in 1970, for the marine diesel business. It ended up in the General Electric fold, after White went under in 1982.

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And, Sands Casino where Bethlehem Steel was? I really hate this stuff.

Three just closed up in Atlantic City this year ...  Showboat, Revel, & Trump Plaza. Trump Taj Mahal just barely got a stay of execution from its financier.

And now, various bills are in the NJ Legislature to pump money into Atlantic City and its casinos, including tax abatements.

The problem with Casinos is that the market for gambling is rather limited, as Atlantic City is finding out, and what they are doing is dividing a thinner and thinner slice of a relatively fixed pie. I understand the why's, the casinos are being touted as saving an economically depressed area, when what often happens is the Casino exists as its own little island and does little for the rest of the area. Vegas still does okay because as a destination there are other things there besides Casinos, they have a convention business and there are a lot of other things there, whereas Atlantic City, for example, has casino row and the rest of the city 35 years after casinos is still as disheveled and run down as in the movie "Atlantic City" with Burt Lancaster.....

I would have preferred to find a way to use the site as an incubator for modern manufacturing, perhaps using 3D printing and other cutting age things, that could provide at least some decent jobs and so forth. 

Yeah, I agree on all points.