The 0 million MGM Springfield is one year away from opening as Massachusetts’s first resort casino. The opening date will be September 8, 2018, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission learned last week.
The casino, hotel and retail complex is rising in downtown Springfield’s South End, the Bay State’s third largest city. Before it opens, Mayor Domenic Sarno pledge that street paving, sidewalk repairs and other improvements are planned.
He declared last week, “We are going to make downtown clean and safe and aesthetically pleasing.”
The Commission’s Executive Director Edward Bedrosian told his board, “We are slightly less than a year away and because we are, we have started our pre-opening preparations, and while it seems like a year is a long time, it really isn’t.”
He said state officials will be meeting on a more frequent basis with MGM officials as the opening date draws nearer.
Keeping Local Money Local
Meanwhile, local municipalities are being asked to weigh in on how to spend the taxes that are starting to be generated. Gaming officials expect tens of millions of dollars will be able to be earmarked for economic development. Each casino will pay 25 percent of its profits to the state, with 9.5 percent of that going for economic development.
Last week Richard K. Sullivan Jr., chief executive officer of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Corp. told lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies that some of the money should be used in the Pioneer Valley.
“I am asking that it not be put into the general fund,” said Sullivan.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission has asked groups like the EDC to suggest worth initiatives, preferably ideas that have regional appeal, such as promoting tourism or agriculture.
MGC Frees More Money for Racing Purses
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission last week approved of an additional $288,000 from the Race Horse Development Fund towards purses for winning riders at Suffolk Downs racetrack in East Boston. The expanded purse will be applied to the track’s final weekend of races.
The commission previously granted the track $3.2 million from the fund which is generated by slot machine revenue. Currently the fund has a balance of $12.8 million.
The track and the New England Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association ended up scheduling more races than it had anticipated, so it ran out of the original grant.
Suffolk Downs COO Chip Tuttle noted: “For our second weekend of festival racing, horsemen’s interest in bringing horses to Suffolk Downs was sufficient to fill 15 races each day, rather than the 10 or so races that we anticipated in our original RHDF request.” He added, “Because we did not want to turn horsemen away, we accepted the entries and carded the extra races, in effect, holding the equivalent of an extra day of racing.”
The commission expressed the hope that the racetrack would plan better for unforeseen contingencies when making requests for purse money.
The Suffolk Downs property has been sold to a development company, McClellan Highway Development Company LCC, which has leased back the racetrack to continue to host races, possibly for two more years.
That would leave one more racetrack operating in the Bay State, Plainridge Park, in Plainville, which is also the state’s first slots parlor. The horseracing industry has been in steady decline since 2001, when there were 179 racing days to 2015, when there were 36.
