On the MGM Springfield casino playlist this week:
Highway 91 Revisited: MGM has come up against a hard truth: opening the downtown casino in 2017 would be a majorly-bad move if the extensive construction work planned for the Interstate 91 viaduct has not yet been completed. A series of adjustments to the timeframe for that highway work, which is now scheduled to end in August 2018, would virtually guarantee a traffic nightmare for casino visitors and residents alike. So MGM has decided to set their opening date as September 2018 — one year later than originally planned.
The company is still on the books for $7 million paid to the city later this year, per their host community agreement. In addition to that money, the company has agreed to pay the city an additional $1 million in fall 2017 to make up for the delay — a much more effective way of saying “I’m sorry” than a bouquet of pink roses (gentlemen, take note).
Final approval now lies with the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, which will likely decide at its next meeting in July whether the benefits of opening the casino one year late outweigh the cost to the state — read: over a hundred million dollars in lost gambling revenue.
Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money): Massachusetts saw its first casino open on Wednesday, June 24 in Plainville, a small town near the Rhode Island border. The new facility has 1,250 gambling machines — or, one for every 6.5 people living in Plainville —and reported first-day attendance of about 10,000 people. Plainville, by the way, is also the home of Honey Dew Donuts, which will remain our first stop in town — at least until Plainridge Park Casino builds a drive-thru window.
The Plainridge casino was built for $250 million, which looks pretty economical compared to the $650 million waterfront casino currently being proposed in New Bedford. MGM Springfield, remember, will cost $800 million to build. And the Wynn casino in Everett is set to cost a whopping $1.7 billion. That’s enough money to fund the National Endowment for the Arts for a decade, or to send one and a half million kids to Space Camp for a summer they’ll never forget.
What would you do with $1.7 billion? Would you spend any of it at your local casino? Send your thoughts to hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
