I got to know him in the early 1980s when I covered the coal industry for the Roanoke Times & World-News. McGlothlin, founder of the United Companies, made his first fortune cobbling together non-union coal properties during the great coal boom of 1974. If McGlothlin is behind the project, it has credibility.

By Clyde, he was referring to Clyde Stacy, a former high school classmate, fellow coal baron, and Southwest Virginia business leader. McGlothlin told the Bristol Herald Courier last September in announcing the project. Clyde and myself are going to put all the money up for this,” James W. “Not one dollar is coming from the city of Bristol, the state of Virginia or the federal government. But in this case, the Bristol casino backers are funding the project themselves. Loans, subsidies, loan guarantees, whatever. When developers spin a fantasy vision of jobs and tax revenues, there’s always a hook - all they need is a little support from government. Normally, I would be highly skeptical of a project like this. The project would generate $30 million annual tax revenue for the hard-pressed locality.Īll the backers need is for the General Assembly to rescind its ban on casino gambling in Virginia. The backers assert that the Bristol Resort and Casino would create an estimated 2,000 jobs initially, growing to 5,000 eventually, and paying an average salary of $46,000.

The City of Bristol, having mortgaged its future with a failed mall development project, is betting on another big-ticket project: a proposed $150 million casino with accompanying hotels, conference center, retail, and restaurants built at the failed mall location. Jim McGlothlin (right) talks about his proposed casino project.

Bristol herald casino