Boston Mayor Menino Backs Away from Anti-Wynn Casino Remarks
There is one casino license up for grabs in the city of Boston, and the race for it is getting a little bit dicey. Casino mogul Steve Wynn has proposed a $1 billion casino property to be built on an environmentally contaminated plot of land in Everett, Massachusetts, formerly the home of a Monsanto chemical plant.
Wynn asserts that the casino/hotel will feature the finest rooms in the city of Boston. The plan calls for between 300 and 500 hotel rooms to overlook the city’s skyline in addition to the usual casino trappings, including a spa, restaurants, and of course a 24-hour casino.
Also competing for one of the operating licenses is a partnership between Suffolk Downs and Caesars Entertainment, which proposes building a massive casino complex on a racetrack site in East Boston. The Suffolk Downs/Caesars plan calls for a budget of $1 billion as well.
Boston’s colorful mayor, Thomas M. Menino, who has of late been plagued with a myriad of health problems, has been criticized for what some see as his blatant support of the Suffolk Downs/Caesars proposal.
Not so, Menino told The Boston Globe, after he was accused of threatening Steve Wynn with regard to the project. Instead, Menino claims that he simply has not received a phone call from Wynn representatives to discuss their intended plans for the Everett site, of which, interestingly enough, Menino says he is part owner.
Quoted in the paper, Menino said, “Nobody approached us at all. We are the gateway to that site. You would think they would have the common sense to talk to me or the [Boston Redevelopment Authority] director.”
The deadline for applications for the Boston license is Tuesday, January 15. While a portion of the Everett property lies within Boston city limits, Wynn’s plans do not call for utilization of that portion of the property, meaning that Menino effectively lacks clout to block a potential Wynn casino being that it will be fully contained within a neighboring municipality.
This didn’t stop Menino from casting public doubt on Wynn’s plan to use what he called “dirty land”, saying, “They’d have to build the Taj Mahal to get anybody to go there.”
The Las Vegas Review-Journal pointed out that Wynn typically likes to develop two projects at once, and currently has an application pending for a casino license in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wynn is also in the process of constructing a casino/hotel property in the Asian gaming mecca of Macau on the Cotai Strip.
Steve Wynn, a man whose name is practically synonymous with the image of glitzy, modern resort casinos, is perhaps not a person worth making an enemy of. Last September, Wynn secured a $40 million legal victory over Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis, who had accused Wynn of threatening to kill him and bury his body in the desert.
“Thank God for the justice system that finally sent a message: If you think you’re taking a cheap shot, it may be a lot more expensive than you had imagined,” Wynn said at the time.
