Make me.

That's your classic schoolyard retort. My 8-year-old threw it at me the other night (and now wishes she hadn't) and it occurs to me that the latest flap on the North Shore casino comes down to more or less the same dynamic.

Don Barden, beset by a host of problems in getting his Ohio River slots parlor off the ground, now wants to hold off on building a riverfront amphitheater and other niceties that were part of his successful bid for the slots monopoly in Pittsburgh.

His spokesman says nobody should worry. This stuff will get built -- three years after the casino opens.

"The dock and the amphitheater are conditions of licensing,'' Mr. Barden's spokesman Bob Oltmanns said. "One of the obligations we have is to build those.

"We're not talking about putting it off indefinitely.''

But it surely seems the state has its best leverage before the casino opens, not after the palace is up and raking in millions of dollars in small bills from suckers. What leverage would the state have to force better landscaping in three years, short of turning off the gambling faucet?

"I don't know what kind of latitude [state gaming officials] have,'' Mr. Oltmanns said.

But that won't come up because Mr. Barden will use his operating revenue to begin building the 1,000-seat amphitheater, the dock, and other missing pieces of the original design in May 2012, Mr. Oltmanns said.

But the developer already has ditched plans for a couple of levels of underground parking, which means his garage will tower above his casino. Add the postponement of river beautification, and this stripped-down model is not the version that Pennsylvania bought when it awarded Mr. Barden the license.

I took a long walk up on the Downtown side of the Allegheny Riverfront yesterday afternoon, before the rain, to remind myself how far the banks of the rivers have come in the past couple of decades, particularly in the past five to 10 years.

I walked the mile and a half of mostly completed trail from the Cork Factory in the Strip District to the Point, a lunchtime journey that a decade ago would have been unthinkable, at least among the sane. At the Cork Factory, where more than 260 apartments have rented a little more than a year after its opening, a man I took to be a grandfather was showing off the building's pool to a laughing child. I passed the Seagate building, the Lawrence Convention Center and The Encore on Seventh Street, and took in views of the Heinz lofts, the Alcoa building, the stadiums and the Carnegie Science Center across the river on the North Side.

Clearly, riverfront developers have been getting things right, and much the same has been happening on the Monongahela, from the SouthSide Works to Station Square. Riverlife, the non-profit task force that has coordinated and advocated for world-class development the past eight years, estimates that $3.5 billion has been invested in a 13-mile loop on the rivers. That stretches from the West End Bridge on the Ohio to the 31st Bridge on the Allegheny, and to the Hot Metal Bridge on the Mon.

That's called 3 Rivers Park and it's about halfway done. As I neared the Point, the construction of the Majestic Star Casino came into view just east of the West Bridge. One of the latecomers to this party, it shouldn't be allowed to spoil it.

It's a truth of modern life that the easiest thing to do is spend other people's money. So I will stop myself before putting an "only'' in front of the $3.5 million that the amphitheater, with its terraced grass steps, is said to cost, though it is a fraction of the total price of the casino, north of $750 million.

Some of Mr. Barden's problems are not of his own making. The losers in bidding for casino rights went to court, and then the Steelers and Pirates took him to court over traffic issues. That delayed construction almost a year, just enough time for credit markets to dry up and construction costs to soar with oil prices. Construction has been suspended as Mr. Barden seeks new financing.

Oh, and Riverlife and two North Side residents have appealed the January planning commission approval of the casino and garage design to the state Supreme Court.

"We had to put a stake in the sand and say, 'This is the budget,''' Mr. Oltmann said in explaining the cost-cutting moves. "We are going to build this [amphitheater] but out of a different pool of money.''

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board said it has the powers of revoking or suspending licenses, part of a broad range of powers it can exercise after due process. I'm still left thinking the way Gov. Ed Rendell does: The man who stands to gain so much from a public license should be made to do what was originally promised.