Boston-Area Casino Bidders to Face Board Tuesday
Deliberations over who will receive the lone Eastern Massachusetts casino license will continue Tuesday, when the commission will speak with competing companies Mohegan Sun and Wynn Resorts, who seek to build in Revere and Everett respectively.
A vote could come this week.
On Monday, the gaming board talked over Mohegan Sun’s and Wynn’s responses to the board’s proposed conditions for receiving the license.
Discussions Bottleneck at Sullivan Square
Though Wynn has graded out well during board discussions, one major issue with the Everett proposal keeps coming up time and again: Traffic mitigation at Sullivan Square in Charlestown. It’s a safe bet that come Tuesday, Wynn will face more questions about that sticking point.
Last Wednesday, the board recommended conditions to the two bidders. They received responses to those conditions late last week, and made them public Monday morning as the meeting began.
Wynn refused to accept a condition that would have seen it make additional payments in the event of excess traffic at Sullivan Square, saying it could not control its customers’ driving behaviors.
The commission seemed stunted when faced with the objection and considered framing it as “take it or leave it’’ proposition for Wynn. After a brief recess, the board instead chose to invite both bidders to answer questions about its concerns Tuesday morning, with the meeting scheduled for 9 a.m.
Wynn also seemed in a letter to have shrugged at the commission’s suggestion that it change its exterior design. However, CommonWealth Magazine reports a Wynn representative emailed the gaming board Monday saying the company is, in fact, willing to consider a redesign.
Marketing Mohegan Sun
You can expect Mohegan Sun to take questions on the details of additional equity it has agreed to put into the project along with partner Brigade Capital, per a recommended condition from the board.
It may also face additional questions about its marketing plan, after refusing to market a Suffolk Downs casino to Connecticut—home of its flagship operation—with the same veracity as it would Rhode Island, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts. However, Mohegan Sun did offer to market the casino at “no less than an equivalent basis’’ to the Connecticut operation in Maine, and also offered to match any promotion offered at its other resorts at the proposed Massachusetts casino.
Wynn & Walsh
As part of its revisions to the conditions, Wynn offered to pay the City of Boston more than it had in its previous best mitigation offer. Wynn has upped that total Boston could receive over the next several years from $46 million to $62.75 million—a major portion of which would wind up going toward Sullivan Square.
Wynn’s offer involves putting much of that money into an account managed by the gaming board, which Boston would need to ask permission in order to access. Commissioner James McHugh pegged that idea as less than cooperative.
“I can’t think of a better approach to disaster than that,’’ McHugh said.
Last week, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh sent a letter to the gaming board challenging its right to award the license. Walsh and the city have a vested interest in Mohegan Sun receiving the license, because Mohegan Sun reached a surrounding community agreement with the city that would pay $18 million per year. The city did not reach a deal with Wynn, and forfeited arbitration to decide between the city’s and Wynn’s proposed agreements. (The board included some payments to the city in its recommended conditions.)
In a letter to the commission, Wynn namesake and CEO Steve Wynn didn’t do much to temper the tension. It read in part:
Notwithstanding the process, we were unable to meet the irrational demands of the City of Boston. Further to that point, Boston, ignoring the law and adapting an arbitrary and unreasonable attitude, refused even to engage in the legally mandated procedure. … Unfortunately, our efforts came to no avail in the face of the City’s intransigence. Instead, Boston has sought to use the enormous leverage of the license itself to extract from us amounts of money and conditions that are inconsistent with common sense.
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