Wynn Resorts broke ground last week on the .1 billion Wynn Boston Harbor, which will sit next to the Mystic River, with the city of Boston very much part of the view.
The casino will be built on 33 acres, and will be by far the largest of the three commercial casino resorts envisioned for the Bay State.
Suffolk Construction said this week that it has already deployed 200 workers on the project, with those numbers expected to climb to 400 in the next three months. Ten cranes and six cement trucks are already on the move. The project will use trucks and adjacent rail lines to away dirt.
The construction company has let a bid package in excess of $1 billion in contracted serves and supplies now needed. Wynn Resorts calls the bid package “among the highest ever issued for any private, union-built, single-phase development in the history of Massachusetts.” Wynn Resorts calls the project the largest private sector single-phase construction project in the history of the Bay State. It will generate an estimated 4,000 construction jobs.
Wynn Boston Harbor President said in a statement, “Wynn is absolute in our commitment to keep as much spending as possible close to home during our nearly three-year construction phase, particularly with minority, women and veteran-owned vendors.” He added, “We particularly want local vendors and workers to step up and play a big role in building Wynn Boston Harbor.”
The official opening date is June of 2019, but upcoming winter weather will play a considerable role in determining exactly when the doors open.
Massachusetts contributes one third of those who visit neighboring Connecticut’s two Indian casinos. The Wynn is expected to draw from a 15-mile radius of the project.
Good Times Ahead
The chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission Stephen Crosby last week predicted that once the casinos that are under construction are completed that the state could realize as much as $300 million annually, which will mean more aid to municipalities and local government.
Crosby said that the MGM Springfield, due to open in 2018, and Wynn Boston Harbor, due to open the following year, would “easily” generate as much as $100 million each, with the Plainridge Park slots parlor in Plainville adding about $80 million.
The Las Vegas style casinos pay 25 percent of gaming revenue while Plainridge Park pays 40 percent.
He added: “I think the Lottery take, the Lottery take will probably not be negatively affected. The take for local aid will probably increase.”
Lottery officials are skeptical of such claims but so far haven’t been able to note a decline in sales since Plainridge Park opened.
Crosby said that Plainridge Park, which is operated by Penn National Gaming, was “going very well,” despite not meeting revenue expectations.
Crosby noted that revenues were 60 percent of projections. “Everybody including Twin River, the competitor across the border 17 miles away in Rhode Island, projected that Penn would do more than it’s been doing. Exactly why it isn’t, nobody’s quite sure. Whether it’s that you can’t smoke or you have to be 21, we don’t know for sure what it is.”
Plainridge, which opened in June of 2015, generated 500 jobs, one fifth of which were people hired from the ranks of the unemployed, the chairman noted. “From the standpoint of the negative consequences, there have been no serious traffic problems since the first day, we have a very careful study done of any crime of any kind in all of the surrounding communities … there has been zero increase in crime in the first six months owing to the casino,” he said.
Despite the troubles that the Mashpee tribe is having from a federal court case, Crosby said the commission isn’t ready yet to reopen the issue of a commercial casino license for the southeastern part of the state. Earlier this year the commission turned down a proposal for Brockton.
