Bob Kraft and Steve Wynn, here’s a little unsolicited advice from a lowly reporter who has mostly seen it all here in the world’s NIMBY capital: Quit now and everyone comes out a winner.
Bob, you get to keep and even enhance your reputation as one of New England’s most respected business leaders and sports owners, even if you lose the big fish for that Route 1 parking lot you’ve spent years dreaming of developing.
And Steve, you get to play the nice guy and show you are not completely ruthless – not a bad billing if you want to have a shot building a casino somewhere else in Massachusetts. In fact, I see a big welcome mat laid out for you and your billions just a few miles away in Milford, where another developer – savvier to the odd ways of the locals around here, even if he doesn’t have your kind of cash – has spent years building support for a casino.
But persist in this quixotic quest to build a casino on Route 1, and gentlemen, with all due respect, you run the risk committing the biggest blunder since John Harrington foolishly tried to tear down Fenway Park.
House Rules
Yes, in Las Vegas the house always wins. But that’s not the case here in Massachusetts when it comes to heated development battles.
You see, in Massachusetts, the town or neighborhood always wins when it comes to a clash with a headstrong developer – and woe to anyone who thinks otherwise.
Sadly, it’s a lesson headstrong business titans and moguls just seem to have to keep relearning again and again.
Emboldened by the grudging support of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Harrington, the one-time Sox chief, thought he could pull off a double play – tear down old Fenway and rebuild it on a large tract of neighborhood land to be seized with the city’s help.
But Harrington’s clumsy attempts to run roughshod over a coalition of pesky Fenway landowners, community activists and ballpark preservationists backfired spectacularly when opponents showed they had a far superior grasp of everything from manipulating the local media to jamming up the city and state bureaucracy.
And Harrington isn’t alone.
Disgraced Columbus Center developer Arthur Winn spent millions over the years trying to ram through plans for a Turnpike air-rights tower that would have dwarfed nearby South End brownstones. He ignored loud opposition voiced at dozens of heated neighborhood meetings, instead funneling contributions to one of the more corrupt politicians in recent Bay State history, former state-senator-turned-jailbird Dianne Wilkerson.
He finally got his approval, but not after a bruising, years-long battle that made the project a pariah. And Winn, caught in a federal probe of the contributions made to curry favor for this white elephant, will soon be joining Wilkerson in the slammer.
Last but not least, there was Nick Pritzker, handsome scion of a Chicago hotel empire and lover of great architecture. He spent a quarter century trying to push through plans for a spectacular project on Fan Pier. His downfall, though, was underestimating his opposition – in this case a sharp attorney from the Conservation Law Foundation and Southie elected officials who know all too well how to win such junkyard scraps.
Strategic Retreat
In the case of Foxborough, the opposition is sweeping and broad, with strong sentiment among both residents and the town’s elected officials. This is not some ragtag band of community activists or anti-gambling zealots – this is an old fashioned, New England revolt.
Moreover, this is a relatively well-off suburb in one of the wealthiest metro regions in the country. Most residents – at least the ones who are likely to vote – are worried about home values and schools. Promises of free day care to go along with a $10-an-hour job might sway a few people down on their luck, but this is not some desperate dust bowl town or hard hit inner-city neighborhood.
Maybe there’s a way to jam this through, despite the refusal of the town’s elected leaders to sit down and discuss a deal. But even if officials waver, it appears unlikely that any casino proposal could win a community-wide referendum. And that’s not counting the two-thirds vote at town meeting that will be needed to re-zone the parking lot across from Gillette Stadium that Wynn wants to use instead for casino gambling.
And even beyond the multiple voters, there is the threat, if and when the proposed casino ever gets approved, of appeals and lawsuits that could drag this out for years. Good luck with that!
But timing is everything. And letting this drag out to the bitter end would be nothing short of disastrous.
That anyway, is my advice for you Bob Kraft, our beloved football owner, and your newfound buddy from Vegas.
Bob, you’re the smartest businessman around. So how does it make sense to squander all the goodwill and hard-earned political capital you’ve built up over the years, through the Patriots and many other brilliant business ventures, on what amounts to a long-shot bet on the roulette wheel?
And Steve, if you play your cards right, you could still wind up getting your Bay State casino – or at least getting a fair shot at one. But not if you make headlines for the next year trying to ram through a casino in a little New England town that just keeps saying no.
I don’t have a clue how to run a casino or a football team. But when it comes to big and controversial development projects, I know a loser when I see one.
