Encore Boston Harbor President Brian Gullbrants has settled the nerves of employees who had read the false report that the mega-casino resort is on the market.
He sent a memo to employees December 19 that said, “It has been falsely reported that Encore Boston Harbor is for sale. I want to assure you that our company has not engaged in any conversations about the sale of the property.”
Gullbrants continued, “In fact, we are very excited about and committed to the future of Encore Boston Harbor and we cannot wait until we are fully re-open, and we have all of our team members back with us every day. The team is hard at work planning for the future of Encore, post-COVID, and we can’t wait to share all of these exciting new ideas with you.”
The report of the casino being for sale had appeared in the Everett Leader Herald. The Encore is located in Everett, along the edge of the Mystic River, with the Boston Skyline across the water.
The casino resort has been a great economic generator for the city of Everett and the immediate region in Massachusetts.
Its construction generated about $1.6 billion in economic activity and created or indirectly supported about 2,500 jobs that account for about $1 billion in personal income.
This information comes from yet another study in a series commissioned by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, and done by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute.
A senior researcher for the institute, Rod Motamedi, commented, “We found that the $1.6 billion in construction spending created $2.6 billion of total economic activity and the related income and jobs that would be needed to produce that.”
Although it cost $1.6 billion to build, it actually cost about $2.6 billion because of expenses such as buying the land, and the project that restored much of the riverfront to pristine condition after it was contaminated for years by a Monsanto chemical plant.
About 70 percent of the construction was contracted to local companies.
The report said, “The average worker received roughly $36,500 in total compensation at an average hourly rate of $47.89 per hour.”
The report also said, “When the estimates of total economic impacts are compared to Encore Boston Harbor’s construction expenditures, the results show that every $1.55 of construction spending created about $1 of additional economic activity in Massachusetts and every in-state job created another 0.85 jobs elsewhere in the Commonwealth.”
