The family that owned 45 acres of woodland in Tiverton, Rhode Island that Twin River Worldwide Holdings purchased in 2015 for a casino near the common border with Massachusetts didn’t know it would be used for that until they read about it several months later.
A Boston attorney contacted the Cory family, who had been trying to sell the property for 40 years. The company purchased an option to buy. A member of the family told the Newport Daily News: “It was around the time Amazon was looking for land; we had high hopes. Whoever would have thought a casino would want to come to Tiverton? I never did.”
In November, the state’s voters by a wide margin, and the city’s voters by a hair-thin margin, authorized Twin River to move its gaming license from the Newport Grand slots parlor to Tiverton, where it will be able to operate slots and table games. Twin River exercised its option to buy in January, paying the Cory family $787,500. It was a nice profit for the family, which purchased the land originally in 1959 for less than $20,000.
Twenty acres of the 45 acres will be used for the 100,000-square foot casino, 84 room hotel and two story parking garage, but, because a large part of the land is taken up by wetlands, it will be a tight fit.
