Connecticut’s two gaming tribes, the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes, recently issued a request for proposals from communities interested in hosting the state’s third, “satellite” casino that the tribes will jointly operate. The RFP was issued by the joint tribal entity MCCT Venture. The deadline to respond is November 8. The tribes plan to choose a site in December.
The purpose of the third casino is to try to retain gaming profits that would otherwise migrate across the state line into Massachusetts and the casinos that will soon be built in Springfield and Everett.
Such a casino would be 500,000 square feet and have 2,000 slots and as many as 150 gaming tables. It would serve an estimated 10,000 patrons a day.
Now various communities near the border are mulling whether they want to host the casino. The tribes specifically have requested a proposal from the city of Hartford. The city’s director of development Thomas E. Deller told the Hartford Courant that the city will look at the proposal soon but might not bid.
The city is not known as a hotbed of pro-casino sentiment. In the 1990s Wynn Resorts wanted to build a casino there and residents rejected the idea. The man most likely to be elected mayor, Luke Bronin said recently, “I don’t see a casino as the solution to Hartford’s challenges, and I don’t agree that it hurts Hartford if the casino goes somewhere else.”
Enfield is another town the tribes asked to submit a proposal. The owners of the Enfield Square Mall, Madison Marquette, who propose turning a defunct cinema into a casino, recently held a town meeting in which most of those attending spoke against the idea. Townspeople were sympathetic to the mall owners’ assertion that they need “a game changer” to turn the mall’s fortunes around, but not enough to support a casino.
Town Manager Lee Erdmann told the Reminder: “There was recognition by most, if not all, of the speakers that the Enfield Square Mall needs a shot in the arm, but most of the speakers were not in favor of a casino as being in the shot in the arm for Enfield.” The town will probably respond to the RFP before the end of October, he said.
Meanwhile officials in East Hartford last week said the process that towns must navigate to apply to be a casino host frustrated them.
Town council Chairman Richard Kehoe said that the RFP process doesn’t provide detailed instructions on how to proceed. “Our feeling is that the process established here, which is not really the fault of the tribes, is one where they somewhat put the cart before the horse,” he said. “We need to figure out as much detail as possible and decide how we want to respond to the RFP.”
In September the city’s planning and zoning commission approved of a plan that would allow a $200 million casino to be sited at the vacant Showcase Cinemas, which closed in 2008. Silver Lane Partners LLC owns the property.
Kehoe told the Hartford Courant, “The sum of this is that there is significant information that the town council will need and we are asking the tribes to give us as much detail as possible as we decide our next step in this process.” This lack of information means that the council won’t be able to respond to some residents’ questions, he said.
“It would be unfair for the public to come out and weigh in on something when, legitimately, people could come to the council and say, ‘You want our comments, tell us a little more,’ and we say, ‘We don’t know.’ That’s a waste of the public’s time.”
Kehoe said that the town’s application would depend on how the tribes respond to some questions. “[W]e also want to be very careful that anything we support, we support knowing clearly what the benefits are for the town, especially the taxpayers, and whether there’s any drawbacks.”
MGM, seeing a direct threat to its revenues—which are a direct threat to the tribes’ revenues—has filed in federal court to try to stop the tribes in their tracks.
The lawsuit challenges the Connecticut law that allows the tribes to pursue a casino on constitutional grounds.
Last week MGM filed an amended complaint providing additional information to support its claim that the law is discriminatory by limiting casino owners to the Mohegan and Pequot tribes.
The amended complaint was an answer to the state’s motion in September to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that MGM did not have standing to sue since it could not legally build a casino in the state anyway due to a 50-mile radius non-compete that forbids it from building a casino that could compete with the Springfield casino.
MGM contends that it could build a casino in Bridgeport and still comply with the 50-mile radius.
In a separate but related development the Connecticut Lottery Corporation announced a final memorandum of understanding with the two tribes for sharing revenues from keno, which the state lottery will introduce later this year.
Under the MOU the tribes will be paid 12.5 percent of the gross operating revenue from the games. They will also be allowed to offer the games at Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun casinos. The MOU was needed because the state tribal gaming compact gives the tribe a monopoly on all commercial casino games in the state.
Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes praised the cooperative manner in which the games were being introduced to the state.
“These agreements are the result of productive and cooperative negotiations between the state and the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes and represents the next step forward in bringing Keno to the state,” said Barnes. “It has previously taken years to implement new gaming, and it is surely a credit to the tribes and the Connecticut Lottery Corporation that we should be able to begin Keno in less than a year after the bill passed. We sincerely appreciate the cooperation and hard work of all stakeholders.”
The tribes were equally positive. The Mohegan tribe’s chief of staff for external and governmental affairs, Charles Bunnell, said, “The Mohegan Tribal Council feels very strongly in open and productive dialogue between our two governments. The recent agreement to allow the Connecticut Lottery Corporation to offer Keno is a perfect example of that communication and our desire to find common ground.”
