No more bets, please.
The lucrative and highly sought after casino license to be granted to Eastern Massachusetts/Greater Boston is going to the team at Suffolk Downs in East Boston – where we all knew it was going in the first place.
The infrastructure – gambling and public – is already there. The land is available. The people want it. The politicians want it. The assembled team of savvy business owners and experienced casino operators can’t help but build a world-class operation.
Hell, it all even comes with an impossible-to-resist, made-for-Hollywood backstory: A historic, if underutilized and borderline shabby, horse racing venue returns to prominence. An equally historic, but hardscrabble and down on its luck neighborhood finally gets a taste of the much-needed attention and renewal that has so often passed it by in recent years.
All thanks to the manna machine that is a glittering gaming palace.
Really, it’s not like there’s even any competition. Let’s be honest – Foxborough already has a money tree of its own in Patriots Place, golden boy Tom Brady and his beautiful family, the reclusive genius of Bill Belichick and the business clout of Robert Kraft.
Who’s going to go to Foxborough when Boston is bigger, easier to get to, more well-connected and wealthier?
Given all of this, we really should stop writing. We can’t be convinced of any other possible outcome. All signs point to Suffolk Downs – as they should.
Still… if all this is true, why can’t we quite convince ourselves to put our pen down?
For all the reasons listed above – and more – if there’s going to be a casino in Greater Boston, it belongs at Suffolk Downs. But there’s something nagging at us, something vaguely unsettling about all of this. It feels like the least foregone of foregone conclusions we’ve ever come across.
Maybe it’s simply because this is Massachusetts, and nothing ever comes simply here or is accomplished without a fight. In this sense, putting a casino at Suffolk Downs makes too much sense. It’s too easy.
Also, this being Massachusetts – a place where being Speaker of the House almost seems to guarantee a fraud conviction – there’s a sense that there almost has to be some kind of underhanded dealing going on in Eastie. There’s too much money at stake, too much political power in play, for there not to be some sort of a handshake deal being made or winks and nods exchanged when it comes time to pick a winning casino bid.
In short, the greatest strengths of the Suffolk Downs proposal are conspiring to become its major weakness.
In the meantime, Kraft and Steve Wynn seem to be saying and doing all the right things in Foxborough. They’ve proven nothing if not at least attentive to the community. They’ve done all the right things, at least from a PR standpoint, to appear transparent, honest and generous.
The Foxborough team has set itself up as the anti-Boston. Small town versus big city. The valued opinions of a small board of zoning officials pitted against the entrenched interests and political might of the longest-serving mayor in the history of New England’s largest city.
We wouldn’t be surprised (won’t be surprised?) if Suffolk Downs ultimately won out on the strength of its numerous advantages. But really, we also wouldn’t be all that surprised if the Foxborough plan won, too, if only because it isn’t Boston.
Kraft and Wynn are smart businessmen. Very smart. We refuse to believe they would go to all this trouble, expose themselves to the media and public scrutiny this much, if they didn’t ultimately think they could be successful.
Which leaves us wondering – what do they know that we don’t? They’re looking at the same long odds, and are still pressing forward. If that doesn’t give pause to the champions of Suffolk Downs, we’re not sure what will.
