A rendering of the now-delayed MGM casino in Springfield.
It was all blue skies this spring when Springfield’s leaders and top MGM executives gathered at a festive ground breaking ceremony for the Las Vegas giant’s planned $800 gambling palace. But storm clouds are starting to move in on Springfield’s big bet that casino gambling can revive its struggling and tornado-ravaged downtown.
Worried about losing their gambling jackpot to Massachusetts, Connecticut lawmakers hustled through plans to give Foxwoods and Mohegan a green light to build a new casino on the state line, just a short drive from Springfield.
And now MGM has pushed off the opening of its gambling and entertainment palace by a year, while making mysterious threats to somehow block Connecticut’s border casino plans.
The stakes may be highest for Springfield, which has made the MGM plan the centerpiece of its efforts to revive the fortunes of one of the poorest cities in New England.
The MGM casino “has bene every helpful to a lot of things happening in downtown Springfield,” said Kevin Kennedy, Springfield’s economic development chief.
“The delay [somewhat] affects our comeback as a city – so I don’t want to say it doesn’t – but they were not obligated to open until February 2018,” he said.
Scott Van Voorhis
The new casino is the core and catalyst of a massive redevelopment plan, with $2.7 billion in new construction either underway or planned in and around downtown Springfield, from work on I-91 to the $88.5 million resurrection of Union Station, Kennedy noted.
The new MGM Springfield will have a 125,000-square-foot gaming floor, a 250-room hotel and 165,000 square feet for restaurants and retail. An outdoor skating rink and a 12-screen cinema are also in the works.
The casino itself is designed to spur surrounding development with an “inside out” design aimed at having the casino blend in with the urban fabric of the city.
In a bid to bolster Springfield’s various cultural, entertainment and meeting venues, the new MGM Springfield will hold events at the nearby MassMutual Center, Symphony Hall and City Stage.
Fight On The Border
In contrast to the somewhat panicky reaction of MGM’s top brass, Springfield’s economic development chief appears to be one of the coolest heads around right now.
Despite the chest-beating down in Connecticut, nothing is a done deal there yet, with no site picked for the proposed satellite casino, Kennedy observed. He also noted that Springfield has held MGM to its schedule of payments, so the delay won’t cost the city a dime.
And MGM has already sunk $200 million into the project, so it’s not likely to be walking away anytime soon.
“Are we concerned in Springfield about competition? Sure, we would be foolish not to be concerned,” Kennedy said. “But in the final analysis, the only thing we can do about that is to have the best project we can possibly have.”
And sure, as Kennedy noted, MGM’s decision to put off the opening of its massive new Springfield casino may very well be tied to slow-as-molasses state roadwork on nearby I-91, basically the main way in and out MGM’s planned gambling palace.
Yet … let’s also get real here. The timing of MGM’s announcement that it will be delaying the opening of its Springfield casino is unfortunate. You can be forgiven for being a little skeptical, given Connecticut’s decision to launch a counter strike aimed directly at MGM’s mega plans for Springfield.
While Foxwoods and Mohegan have yet to select a site, the idea is to set up a smaller version of their massive gambling palaces near the Massachusetts border.
Such a satellite casino would lure away any Connecticut gamblers who might be tempted to cross the border, and maybe even pick up some additional business from the Massachusetts side.
At the very least, it throws a monkey wrench into MGM’s own market plans, which banked on attracting gamblers from the densely populated Hartford area, which, as it stands now, would be closer to a new casino in Springfield than to either Foxwoods or Mohegan.
If there are any doubts MGM is taking this threat very seriously, they were put to rest by the company’s president.
“We’re not going to go peacefully,” William Hornbuckle, president of MGM, told Bloomberg News, adding the gambling giant is “contemplating our options.”
MGM officials have since gone silent when asked to detail what sorts of counterattack the Las Vegas casino company is planning.
Lessons Learned From New Bedford
Certainly recent news developments about another would-be casino project in New Bedford show how the threat of nearby competition can wreak havoc with plans for a new gambling venue.
Development giant KG Urban recently pulled the plug on a proposal for a $650-million casino in New Bedford, citing long-standing challenges in lining up financing for the project.
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s years-long drive to open its own casino in the region has certainly been a wildcard, with a decision by the federal government on the plan expected at some point.
However, it certainly could not have helped that Rhode Island’s Twin River casino raised the stakes as well, laying out plans for its own satellite casino a few hundred feet from the Massachusetts border and just a short drive from New Bedford.
No one expects MGM to suddenly cancel its Springfield plans as a license to open a casino in gambling-happy Massachusetts nothing to sneeze at. But whether MGM can afford to go ahead with all $800-million-worth of its ambitious casino plan is an open question.
MGM’s big and bold plan certainly impressed the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and helped the gambling giant bag the Western Massachusetts casino license.
Yet even before Connecticut rolled out plans for a counter casino, the scope of MGM’s plans –given the relatively modest Western Massachusetts market – was already being called into question by one of the region’s top gambling analysts, Clyde Barrow, formerly of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and now of the University of Texas.
For now, MGM is sticking, with its latest filings with the state gaming commission showing no change in its plans. That said, MGM’s decision to delay the opening of its grand Springfield casino certainly gives it extra time to consider its options, whether intended or not.
