The cardroom church

There’s a movie called The Hoodlum Priest, but I don’t think it’s about the guy who runs this casino turned church. From the Fresno Bee:

Vineyard Casino stirred great hopes of a tax windfall for Fowler when it opened 10 years ago in a big new building on a 13-acre property on the city’s south end.

In the first 31/2 weeks, the cardroom took in $664,262 and appeared on track to pay Fowler the expected $1 million in taxes yearly — a princely sum for a city with an annual budget of $1.8 million.

But 10 months later, Vineyard Casino, in financial distress, closed its doors. Its owners were more than $2 million behind on the rent.

Bids for the 49,000-square-foot building and land came and went without any deals.

The property, at Manning Avenue and Golden State Boulevard, is along my daily commute. I saw weeds grow and the building sit vacant for seven years, all the while thinking, “What a waste.”

Not any more.

A decade after the casino opened, renewed hope and promise are thriving — though in a spiritual, rather than financial, sense.

The former casino has been home to Worship Centre Church, an Assemblies of God church, since November 2003.

Ex-casino resurrected as church in Fowler

It’s even more ironic because the current owners believe that the building was constructed by the devil–though he probably hired some mortal subcontractors for most of the work. The senior pastor actually said “The devil tried to use it to destroy lives,” meaning the cardroom/casino. But as long as its up to code, I guess they don’t have a problem with the devil’s work.

This gets me thinking…if the devil built the cardroom, and it failed, does that make the people who worked there the “devil’s rejects?” Maybe this is what the next Rob Zombie movie will be about: “Back of the House of 1000 Corpses: The Devil’s Dual-Rates.”