
With two months to go before the $960 million MGM Springfield opens, officials of the casino and the city said last week they are discussing how to deal with the huge numbers of people and cars that are expected in the city’s South End the first few days after the August 24 grand opening, when crowding is expected to be at its peak.
These officials made a report last week to the City Council Casino Oversight Committee, predicting the downtown will be impacted by “an extraordinary number of people coming in.”
They haven’t completed their plans, but all parties recognize that communication between the casino, the authorities and businesses in the area will be crucial.
Seth Stratton, MGM Springfield vice-president and general counsel told the group, “We do anticipate a high volume the opening day and the weeks following.”
MGM officials have been meeting with all impacted departments, such as public works and the police. Options that are being looked at are close some streets and setting up temporary parking outside of the area immediately around the casino.
They are deciding ahead of time where to post police, where to locate barriers and set up temporary park and ride locations for workers whose places of employment are near the casino.
One special case is the Caring Health Center, which is across the street from the casino. Plans are to keep the Center apprised of all developments and to continue the free valet parking system that the casino currently funds.
Long before the August 24 opening date the casino will be opening a parking garage with 3,400 spaces.
Encore Boston Harbor
The embattled Wynn Resorts Limited has been in a heightened state of crisis ever since February, when founder and CEO Steve Wynn was forced to resign and sell all of his assets.
That hasn’t let the company off the hook with Massachusetts, where Wynn is building the Encore Boston Harbor (once known as Wynn Boston Harbor) in Everett, across the Mystic River from Boston.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission continues to subject the company to a corporate colonoscopy to determine if any of the firm’s executives were aware and kept from the MGC details of Wynn’s alleged sexual misconduct during the period when the company was being vetting for its license to operate a casino in the Bay State.
Wynn’s successor is Steve Maddox, an executive from a different generation, who has led an overhaul of the firm’s priorities, including relocating its expansion plans from Las Vegas to Asia, changing the corporate culture to modern its attitude towards women—and to finish the $2.5 billion Boston casino—if the MGC allows it.
The commission could still yank the license, less than a year away from the day when the casino is due to open.
Maddox’s problems have been complicated by a new lawsuit, by one of the minority owners of the 33 acres that Wynn Resorts purchased to build the casino.
At the time the purchase was made, the owners were under scrutiny because of the alleged involvement and secret ownership of a convicted felon, Charles Lightbody. State law mandates that a felon can’t make a profit off of a land sale for a casino, and so Wynn pressured the owners to lower the sale price of the land to market value.
It later turned out that Lightbody had no ownership, secret or otherwise, but one of the land owners, Anthony Gattineri, has sued Wynn, claiming he never agreed to lower the sale price. He further claims that Wynn promised he would pay him $20 million more under the table if Gattineri agreed to the sales price—but that Wynn reneged on the agreement.
According to the complaint in June 2014, before Wynn was awarded the license, Gattineri met with Robert DeSalvio, president of the Wynn Massachusetts casino.
“Robert DeSalvio then made Anthony Gattineri the following offer: if Anthony Gattineri signed the required Certificate and Wynn obtained the casino license for a casino …Wynn would ‘make Anthony Gattineri whole’ by providing him with his percentage of the purchase price reduction (which is $18,676,000).”
Wynn and DeSalvio have refused to honor the agreement, says the complaint. A spokesman for Wynn Resorts, Greg John calls the lawsuit, “an attempt to now extract an additional multi-million-dollar payment from our company beyond what was negotiated and accepted by Mr. Gattineri and his partners in the Everett land transaction.”
John added, “Mr. Gattineri’s claim that a publicly-traded company in a highly-regulated industry would execute a $20 million transaction on a handshake deal, without any documentation or paperwork, is implausible and will be vigorously defended by Wynn.”
Meanwhile some news outlets have reported that Wynn Resorts is trying to get out from under the Encore Boston Harbor by selling it to MGM Resorts. If MGM bought the casino, it would have to divest itself of the MGM Springfield because state law says that no entity can hold more than one license.
Whoever ends up with the Encore Boston Harbor will have a potentially very profitable property. Based on the average price of a hotel room in the city, the Encore could generate $69 million annually from the hotel tower’s 650 rooms.
Using the example of the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Casinos in neighboring Connecticut as a benchmark, it is reasonable that the Everett property could collect $550 million annually in gaming revenue.