Inglewood Casino Ready for First Deal : Gaming: Fiscal solvency and jobs are on the table as Hollywood Park club opens today.

With newly trained local dealers ready to hit the tables today, one major hurdle remains for the Hollywood Park Casino card club in Inglewood: to make money, lots of money.

Riding on the success of the club are jobs for at least 2,000 residents, as well as fiscal solvency for the city. Inglewood officials have written in a nonexistent $4 million in taxes from the club to balance the 1994-1995 budget.

The club, featuring 150 gaming tables, 24-hour amenities such as a health club, karaoke suites and two restaurants, will open after two years of delays. That the club, the third largest in the state, is opening at all is a coup for Inglewood because the casino suffered several major setbacks during its efforts to gain state approval.

“That card club saves us all--it saves the residents of Inglewood,” Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent said after the club received state permission to open. “It was a long, hard road, but this is the best thing that could possibly happen to the city of Inglewood.”

Residents have been trained to deal cards in a special school to help fulfill a promise to hire those who live in Inglewood--people such as Sean Allen.

Tantalized by stories of the good money to be had as a card dealer, Allen, 22, quit his job at his parents’ real estate company last year and enrolled in a 12-week course at the Gaming Academy in Inglewood, where he learned how to deal cards professionally.

But dealers earn minimum wage, $4.25 an hour, and most of their income will come from tips, which means Allen will make money only if lots of people go to the card club.

Hollywood Park, its investors, Inglewood residents and city officials are making the same gamble.

City Manager Paul D. Eckles has estimated that the club could provide $10 million a year to Inglewood’s budget.

Last year, the Legislature approved a bill that would have allowed Hollywood Park racetrack to run the club, but Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed it on the grounds that the state does not have the staff to investigate gambling enterprises owned by corporations with thousands of unknown stockholders.

Then the city found investors that included Edward Allred, a partner in the Los Alamitos racetrack, to run the club, and the casino was scheduled to open in January. But Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s office refused to issue a license on the grounds that Allred previously owned stock in out-of-state gambling businesses.

But the club finally found acceptable managers when former National Football League executives Eddie LeBaron and Don Klosterman agreed in April to pay $3 million a month to run it.

LeBaron and Klosterman are betting that some of the crowds who visit Inglewood will patronize the casino. The racetrack draws about 5 million people annually, Klosterman said, and the Forum attracts an additional 2.5 million.

But for the card club to be a success it will have to attract the hard-core gaming aficionados who make up a large block of any casino’s clientele, LeBaron said.

“Of course doing this is a risk--but it’s a calculated risk,” LeBaron said. “We think this is going to attract a lot of new players, it will attract people who like sports, people who like the racetrack itself and then the serious card players, who believe me, will travel to a good casino.”

The card club has already raised some people’s fortunes.

Things seemed bleak for Inglewood resident Valerie A. Lewis, 31, when she was laid off from her job as a lease analyst for Unocal. But Lewis went to the Gaming Academy to learn how to deal and then landed a job at the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens. There she made twice as much money as she did at Unocal, she said. Today, she begins work at Hollywood Park, with even higher hopes.

“A good dealer can make $4,000 a month,” Lewis said. “But I don’t intend on staying a dealer. I want to move up in the industry.”

And business is not bad for Jean Williams, owner of the Gaming Academy. Williams used the savings she earned as a desktop publisher to learn how to deal and then opened the three-room academy on Manchester Boulevard, just up the street from the Forum. The course costs $1,200 to $2,500 depending on whether students take a few classes or a three-month course.

Days before the opening, the newly minted dealers practiced how to build a rapport with the players.

“There is a connection between the dealer and the players,” Allen said. “If you learn to get along with a positive attitude, you bring out the best in the players and they bring out the best in you . . . win or lose.”