A casino in Marseille?

To the Mayor of Marseille

Dear Mr Gaudin,

I allow myself to address this message to you in English, though I doubt that you will understand it, but at least my friends around the world will be able to read what I have to say to you.

I have read in the press that you want to build a casino on the water front in Marseille and that the project is up for vote on Monday in the last city council meeting before the elections next March. It is reported that you want to create more activities for the tourists and create jobs and income for Marseille. Apparently a casino could employ 200 people and give a tax income of about EUR 5 - 10 million annually.

I fully support your wish to create jobs and put money into the local economy, but I don't agree with your focus on tourism and more particularly cruiseship passengers. I want you to create jobs for the young in the northern areas of Marseille to allow them to find alternatives to drug dealing and robberies, but I don't want the young people to change their kalashnikovs by a game of cards and some colourful plastic chips.

Marseille has a long history linked to the sea: 2,600 years of trading across the Mediterranean. True, Marseille always seems to have pulled the short straw when it came to making choices. Thus raw materials were imported by ship from the colonies and from all over the Mediterranean only to be re-exported to somewhere else. Nobody bothered to use the raw materials to create added value and jobs because reexportation gave an easy and quick return on an investment. And, thus, Marseille has simply become the poor relative in the south.

Are the cruiseships the magic solution to the empty pockets in Marseille? You seem to believe so, as you have also backed the construction of Les Terrasses du Port which will open next spring with some 160 shops. I don't think that the poor from the northern areas of town will come here, and it seems that the shopkeepers in Grand Littoral, on the Canebière, and in rue de la République are already struggling, so you must be expecting the cruiseship passengers to be spending, spending, spending, right? Aren't you about to commit the same mistake that the traders in the past centuries committed when they were only thinking of immediate satisfaction and result?

We, the inhabitants of Marseille, are proud of our town and want to share the chaos, the dirt, the noise, and the rudeness with visitors from abroad. We want the visitors to love what we love about Marseille, but we still want to stay the way we are. Our town is not Nice or Deauville or Saint Tropez. Marseille is not a glossy photo and people who come here don't want glossiness! They want to have a little taste of the French Connection, North Africa and Provence. That is what makes Marseille special and different.

Let the Cote d'Azur keep their expensive restaurants, their fancy nightclubs, their yachts and their casinos! Let's give the tourists who come to Marseille authenticity. Let the tourists eat in the small restaurants near the Vieux Port, let them walk in the narrow streets in the Panier, and let them catch their breath when they look at Marseille and the islands from La Bonne Mère.  Let's trust the tourists to want a little more from Marseille than a gambling table.

I fell in love instantly with Marseille more than 10 years ago when I got off the TGV from Paris,  I am sure that you want me to continue being in love with Marseille. So trust me; you don't want to build a casino on the water front.

Kind regards

A Dane in France

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http://www.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/politique/marseille-gaudin-et-mennucci-croisent-le-fer-sur-un-projet-de-casino_1305483.html

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Le Conseil Municipal de Marseille a prévu de voter le lundi 9 décembre l'installation d'un casino sur le J4, la terrasse maritime qui s'ouvre devant...

http://www.change.org/fr/p%C3%A9titions/pas-de-casino-devant-le-mucem

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