Steve Wynn would like to open the Wynn Boston Harbor by early 2019, but that date could be pushed back depending on an appeal of a state environmental permit by the mayor Somerville, Joseph A. Curtatone.
Considered the largest private project in the history of the state, the Wynn casino resort will include a 629-room hotel tower, spa, gym, convention center, retail stores, dining, and nearly 3,000 underground parking spaces.
The project has run afoul of mayors before, mainly from two mayors of Boston, who tried to stop the project from happening at all.
Curtatone appears to be angling for more mitigation money from Wynn than his city has currently gotten. His appeal calls for Wynn to do more to mitigate the increased traffic and other environmental impacts that his casino will cause in Somerville.
His appeal will be reviewed by the state Department of Environmental Protection on June 2. It could push back the opening of the casino.
“If Mayor Curtatone digs in his heels, it could go on a very long time,” Christopher Gordon, president of Wynn Design and Development Massachusetts, commented last week, according to the Boston Herald. He added, “We’re waiting for that to get litigated through the process.”
Gordon pointed out that the project has done extensive cleaning of hazardous wastes that were left behind on the 34-acres along the Mystic River by the former Monsanto chemical plant that was there for many years as well as other chemical companies that occupied the site before that.
“For 30 years, they fought about the contamination,” Gordon remarked. “In four months, we cleaned it up.” He added that Wynn also plans to pay $574 million to the host city and surrounding communities, $208 million in subsidies for mass transit and $58 million in road improvements.
MGM Springfield
MGM Resorts is poised to begin the first actual construction associated with the $950 million MGM Springfield, with the first work to begin later this month of a seven-level 3,400 space parking structure.
MGM has awarded the contract for the parking garage to Tishman Construction, and Fontaine Bros. Inc. It hopes that the garage will be completed by the end of 2017, and that the casino itself will open a year later.
MGM Springfield CEO Michael Mathis announced last week, “We are excited to see construction on the garage move forward.” The project is considered to be the largest private project being built in the western part of the Bay State.
Over the past few months workers have been clearing the 14-acre footprint in preparation for building the garage.
The casino will have 3,000 slot machines, 75 gaming tables and a 250-room hotel. Building it will create about 2,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent positions, according to the developer.
At the most recent meeting of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission it unanimously voted to accept the changes in MGM’s design for the casino resort, which included replacing the 26-story hotel tower with a lower-slung hotel with the same number of rooms and a smaller overall footprint.
At that meeting Chairman Stephen Crosby exclaimed, “Seeing this again, it reminds me why we’re really excited about it. It’s a really exciting attempt to lift a city and integrate a casino into a whole lot of other stuff.”
The design changes were very controversial when the Republican newspaper uncovered them last year. The changes sparked bitter recriminations from some Springfield city officials and forced MGM to do some extensive fence mending. MGM executives spent many days with city officials going over the details.
There were some tense days between MGM and Mayor Domenic Sarno, one of the projects strongest supporters, who initially sounded as though he felt betrayed by the changes, but later came on board.
MGM sold the redesign as a way to save costs, although the overall cost will be $950 million instead of the original $800 million. However that final figure would be even higher without the design changes, says the developer. It also argued that its new design would better preserve the historic look and feel of the downtown area.
Eventually, however, the city officials liked what they saw and in February the city council voted 12-1 to endorse the new design. The commission vote was the final hurdle that MGM had to jump for the project to go forward.
Mathis told the commission, “The $950 million budget makes it by far the largest private development project in Western Mass, and puts it on the list of the largest developments in the entire commonwealth, which frankly has for too long been centralized in the Boston and Cambridge area.” He said the company would spend $50 million with local businesses.
He added that the new hotel design, although not a flashy tower, will still be a four star affair. “You can have luxury that’s not necessarily in a high-rise tower,” he said.
Diversity Grants
In a separate but related action the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) recently gave $100,000 in grants to six recipients in the Bay State as part of the Diversity Goal and Business Technical Assistance Grant Program.
Such grants are authorized by the 2011 Expanded Gaming Law that authorized three casino resorts and a slots parlor and created the commission. Its purpose is to increase participation by minorities, women and veteran owned businesses.
The commission requested grant applications to fund non-profits, and public and semi-public entities that serve local businesses owned or controlled by persons who fit the definition of minority or other diverse groups, including economically and socially disadvantaged groups that might do business with a casino.
From the applications it chose six recipients for the grants, which must be spent or designated by the end of this fiscal year.
