Rockaway Beach, MO) -- In yet another roll of the dice, the prospects of a new casino in Rockaway Beach, Missouri remain bleak.

For years, Missourians have voted down a plan to build a casino there to boost business, but now the town faces new challenges.

It comes in the form of Proposition A, which passed one week ago and it's hurting any chance for communities like Rockaway Beach to build casinos.

But that's not stopping local leaders attempting to return to a family-orientated community.  Some Rockaway Beach residents are betting on a new committee that's aimed at revitalizing a once-booming town.

"We saw Branson before Branson.  This is where everybody came for their trips.  There's 22 miles of lakefront out here and there's two waterfronts.  Branson Landing and Rockaway Beach.  So, it would be a shame to waste the area," said Rockaway Beach Mayor Larry Cline.

The game plan focuses on tourism, public safety, ordinances, downtown and neighborhood revitalization.

"What we've done is gone in now and we've kind of put in a strategy, an idea and so the comprehensive idea is being written right now," said Cline.

That strategy requires businesses to overlook the downtown lakefront.  Developers would also build a city dock for expected visitors.

"We're not going to try and compete with Branson. We're going to compliment Branson," says Cline.

Rockaway Beach and Branson leaders are collaborating for the re-development and say Proposition A won't get in their way.

"I'm going to be very blunt.  My experience with these propositions is they make it sound like they are going to help the schools, but in reality what the casinos give to the school, the government takes away and that money gets appropriated elsewhere.  And so I didn't feel like that was not a really good proposition," said Karen Huff, a Rockaway Beach resident.

To bring in new businesses, Rockaway leaders say it's all about infrastructure and want to replace the town's waterlines and wrap up work on part of its sewer line.  Residents say the past is also the key to cashing in on progress.

"I think we can take that and build it for the future. You know, we can take that idea and put it into the bigger picture and say that's what we would like and we want to use some of those basic principals, but we got to do what's unique for Rockaway and make Rockaway its own town," said Huff.

Leaders in Rockaway Beach say they hope state and local grants will get the ball rolling and help encourage business owners to set up shop downtown.

Mayor Cline hopes to finalize the plan by spring.  Then, he will start looking for a developer soon after that.