Wynn Presents Plans for $1.5 Billion Boston Casino
This week casino mogul Steve Wynn unveiled his plans for a Boston-area casino resort, which, if approved, will boast 550 luxury hotel rooms, water taxi service to downtown Boston and the airport, and will total an impressive 2.7 million square feet.
While Wynn himself was not present when the representations were revealed, President and COO of Wynn Resorts Gamal Aziz was on hand to outline the company’s plans for its proposed site, a former Monsanto Chemical facility on the Everett waterfront, just outside Boston city limits.
The cleanup required for the polluted property would be extensive, however Wynn Resorts intends to complete the cleanup and construction work in one phase so as to minimize disruptions for locals.
“This development would really give us the opportunity to give the riverwalk back to the people of Everett,” Aziz stated.
“This is something we have not seen here in Everett since the ‘80s and quite honestly if we are not selected by the Gaming Commission it may be a very long time before anyone takes interest in this site because, as you know, the site is highly contaminated and requires extraordinary investment,” he went on to add.
One casino license will be granted for the Boston area, and naturally the competition for it is fierce. Wynn is facing competition from a partnership between Suffolk Downs and Caesars, which said this week that they would be holding open houses on April 9, 11, and 13, where models of their development plans will be presented.
The open houses are meant not only as an answer to Wynn’s proposal, but also to acquaint residents who might be on the fence with their plans. The companies intend to build a casino resort property at the Suffolk Downs racetrack in East Boston, also the location of the upcoming open house events.
In a statement, Suffolk Downs COO Chip Tuttle said of the project, “In our continuing effort to provide local residents with as much detail as possible about our development, this model offers a more tangible vision of what the property would look like and how local traffic conditions would be improved.”
Massachusetts isn’t the only state in the nation looking to build more casinos in order to lure in tourists and their revenue dollars. Across the country, a similar story is unfolding as states compete with one another to capture gambling-derived income as the economy remains weak.
Indiana presents an interesting example of the effect such competition can have. The Hoosier State was a relatively early comer to the casino gambling scene, having approved land-based casinos back in the mid-1990’s, when very few states were doing so.
As a result, Indiana has enjoyed relatively little competition from neighboring states for gambling revenue, however the recent opening of a casino property in Cincinnati and talk of land-based gambling expansion in neighboring Illinois has Indiana lawmakers worried about stemming the tide of lost revenue.
Earlier this year, legislators there proposed the construction of even more casinos in the state, this time further inland, to prop up the state’s casino industry should a downward trend continue, a scenario that is incredibly likely, especially if plans to build a casino in downtown Chicago’s theatre district ever get off the ground.
