With a triumphant cry of “We did it! We did it!” Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell led the groundbreaking for the billion First Light Resort & Casino in Taunton, Massachusetts. “This is a historical day in the tribe’s history. It’s a signal that something great is about to happen,” he said.
Cromwell added, “Economic growth is on the horizon. Southeastern Massachusetts is now on the map.”
He told the 500 tribal members, state and city officials and construction workers gathered for the ceremony “We did it and we did it together,” adding “This resort casino will rival any casino in the country.”
Taunton Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr. helped lead the celebration, exclaiming to cheering crowds, “Guess who’s gonna be first to market?” He was referring to the possibility that the tribe will be the first in the Bay State to open a casino resort.
It is certainly the first to break ground in the southeastern part f the state, called Region C by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. The casino resort will be built on 151 acres next to an industrial park. The first phase is scheduled to open by the summer of 2017, with the final phase being completed by 2022.
That opening will be well before the $950 million MGM Grand in Springfield and the $2 billion Wynn Boston Harbor in Everett, neither of which is likely to open before late 2018.
The Mashpees claim the First Light casino will generate in excess of 2,600 permanent jobs and 1,000 construction jobs.
When the casino opens it will be managed by Genting Malaysia Bhd., whose management agreement last week was approved by the National Indian Gaming Commission.
At the ceremony Michael Speller of Genting Group, declared, “Bar none this is going to be the finest project in the state.”
The casino resort will eventually include a 900-room hotel, divided between three separate towers, retail shopping, a performance stage, dining and a casino on 150,000 square feet with 3,000 slot machines, 40 poker tables and 150 gaming tables. It will also eventually have a spa and water park. The project was once dubbed a $500 million project, but now is described as double that.
Genting will have no equity interest in the casino resort since the tribe is sovereign, although it has so far invested $250 million in promissory notes to back the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Gaming Authority.
According to Genting, “The investment in notes allows the group to enhance the returns expected from its involvement in the project.”
According to a statement issued by Genting, its position as casino manager, “is expected to be for a period of seven years commencing from the opening of the … property.” It added, “Genting Malaysia group’s foray into the gaming industry in Massachusetts is expected to complement and further establish the group’s growing presence in the U.S., where it already has operations and developments in the states of New York and Florida.”
The Malaysia-based Genting Group is the largest casino developer in the world.
Other Genting properties in North America are in New York, Bimini and planned for Las Vegas.
The tribal state gaming compact requires the tribe to pay 17 percent of its revenues to the state. However it would pay nothing if another casino opens in Region C. Plainridge Park, the state’s first and only slots parlor opened last year in Plainville, about 25 miles from Taunton.
The groundbreaking may have been planned to put pressure on the gaming commission not to grant a license to operate a $677 million casino on the Brockton Fairgrounds to Mass Gaming & Entertainment. It would have to pay 25 percent of its revenue to the state.
Although Mass Gaming would be operating at a competitive disadvantage to the tribe because of paying a quarter of its revenues in taxes while the tribe pays nothing, it has argued that it is the safer bet to open because of the lawsuit that has challenged the tribe’s ability to put the Taunton land into trust. Mass Gaming is helping to fund that lawsuit. It argues that the lawsuit could last for years.
The lawsuit, filed in February, claims that the BIA’s decision to put the Taunton land into trust violated the 2009 Supreme Court decision in Carcieri v. Salazar that said that tribes recognized by the federal government after 1934 could not put land into trust. The Mashpees were recognized in 2007.
Attorney Adam Bond, the attorney for the residents challenging that action, last week called the groundbreaking, “a high-risk bluff being taken by the tribe, but it does nothing to change the dynamics of the suit.”
Chicago-based casino developer Neil Bluhm has told the commission that his Brockton casino could live in harmony with the rival tribal casino 16 miles away and that the taxes his casino would pay the state would make up for the revenues it will lose from the Mashpee tribe.
The commission says it will vote later this month on the Brockton license.
Keith Foley, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service, told CBS Boston that the Boston-Providence corridor is now ground zero for a New England casino race. It includes competition in Rhode Island, where voters will decide in November if the company that owns Twin River Casino can locate a small casino along the state line with Massachusetts in Tiverton. The Taunton casino is 70 miles from Springfield.
Referring to Foxwoods and the Mohegan Sun, Foley said, “These are the people that are making the trips to Connecticut.”
Richard McGowan, a gambling expert at Boston College, thinks neither casino will be able to compete with the Wynn Boston Harbor. He told CBS, “Both plans are unrealistic. Once the Wynn casino is built near Boston, then the Boston casinogoers will no longer have to travel. That is the casino which will reap the profits of Massachusetts casino gambling.”
By 2018 if all plans come to fruition, four and maybe five casinos will be operating in the Bay State.
The Connecticut gaming tribes, for their part, are in the midst of a process to select a host community near Hartford to blunt the effects of the MGM Springfield and the Taunton casino, Bobby Soper, chief executive officer and president of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority last week told the Day that he doesn’t “anticipate material impact from their [the Taunton] development.”
