Petersburg Mayor Bites Back On Accusations Over Casino Developer Choice

Mayor of Petersburg Sam Parham has addressed comments made by city officials about him regarding the city's casino developments (C: Petersburg VA, Alamy)

Petersburg Mayor Sam Parham defended the decisions and statements made by city officials on Wednesday, reiterating that his city faced political pressure from the Virginia General Assembly to pick a certain casino developer in order for the legislature to support the city’s casino destination ambitions.

Parham made his comments on Wednesday afternoon, after the Petersburg City Council held a closed meeting to discuss legal issues surrounding the casino project. 

Parham: Council ‘Told the Truth’ About Legislative Pressure

Petersburg city officials have maintained that they faced political pressure – suggested to be from State Sen. Lashrecse Aird (D-Petersburg), but potentially from other legislators as well – to pick a specific developer to partner with on its casino proposal. 

On April 17, City Manager John Altman Jr. signed a letter addressed to Bally’s Senior Vice President Christopher Jewett indicating that Petersburg planned to select Bally’s as its development partner. However, that letter was never sent to Bally’s, with city officials saying it was only returned to its “sender”, which the city council has insinuated to be Aird. 

A week later, the Petersburg City Council chose The Cordish Companies as its casino partner, a move that many expected after the city had initially selected Cordish in an earlier casino attempt back in 2022. The City Council claimed that Petersburg was told it had to reconsider that choice if it wanted to gain the necessary legislative support for the city to become a potential casino host, leading to the Bally’s letter being signed under duress.

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Aird has said that the city council’s resolution presents a “revisionist history” of the casino process. But in Parham’s comments on Wednesday, he stood behind that version of events.

“We have a council of seven that is unified on the fact that we told the truth,” Parham told reporters on Wednesday. 

“Everything that we provided in [the resolution] is definitely the truth, and we stand by that.”

Parham said he wasn’t aware of why legislators might have something against Cordish, calling it a “solid, family-run operation.” 

Union Battle Brewing Over Cordish Pick

However, the issue may come down to union support. While Bally’s  (who have destinations such as Bally's in Atlantic City) and some other bidders for the Petersburg casino project are on good terms with the Unite Here hospitality union, Cordish is not. However, Cordish does have agreements in place with Maryland’s Seafarers Entertainment & Allied Trades Union, something Parham was quick to point to.

“Cordish does have union jobs,” Parham told reporters. “I’m not here to pick between which union is better. I want the best product for the citizens of Petersburg.”

Unite Here Local 25 is threatening to sue the city of Petersburg unless it shares all documents and correspondence related to the selection of Cordish. The union says that the lack of information ahead of the April 24 meeting where Cordish was chosen violated Virginia laws mandating government transparency in such transactions. 

Unite Here donated $800,000 to Aird’s Senate campaign in 2023. Parham and others have linked those donations to Aird’s efforts to push Petersburg towards Bally’s, which has a better relationship with the union.

The tensions between the city of Petersburg and the state legislature come despite the fact that it was Aird who engineered the push to make Petersburg a casino host in the latest legislative session

Throughout the process, it seemed as though state lawmakers had some reservations about Petersburg running a transparent process to choose a casino developer. But Parham attributed the dispute to the political dynamics in Virginia. 

“There’s a lot of power in northern Virginia, and there’s a lot of power in Tidewater,” Parham said. “By us being a smaller locality, we’ve never had a type of political horsepower to move things through…I think it’s just finally our time.”

Ultimately, Wednesday’s closed city council meeting resulted in very little, at least publicly. In open session, the city council approved a change to last week’s resolution, but it only altered the date of a town hall meeting in Petersburg held by Aird from March 22 to the correct date of April 14.