MGM Resorts International will begin demolishing the defunct Alfred G. Zanetti Elementary School, making way for the 0 million MGM Springfield.
The school was partially destroyed in June of 2011 when a freak tornado wrecked parts of the city. The school was the site of the project’s groundbreaking in March of 2015.
MGM is building a casino resort on 14.5 acres that it plans to open in 2018.
That is one year later than the originally planned opening. To fight accusations that MGM has lost its passion for Springfield due to its downsizing of the project by about 10 percent, the gaming company is spending money on a billboard campaign that will remind motorists that the casino IS coming.
Last year some member of the city government were stunned when they learned that MGM planned to downsize its 25-story hotel tower and replace it with a six story hotel.
“The billboards are our way of letting people know that MGM is working diligently toward a 2018 opening, notwithstanding our recent challenges,” MGM Springfield spokeswoman Carole Brennan told the Associated Press.
MGM Springfield President Mike Mathis told the AP that the billboard campaign highlights the fact that “We are going nowhere.”
MGM continues to fight against the opening of a third, satellite Indian casino in neighboring Connecticut, 11 miles from Springfield. A joint gaming enterprise by the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes, MM4CT, is taking bids from four border communities to host the third casino.
