The much-touted Eastern Massachusetts casino license competitions are over before they began, with no signs of the high-stakes bidding war Gov. Deval Patrick and his State House pals promised.
OK, so it’s probably too early to crown Suffolk Downs and the Mashpee Wampanoags as the winners of the Boston area and Southeastern Massachusetts licenses. But backed by big money and savvy local operators, both are well on their way to snagging two of the state’s three casino licenses after years of relentless lobbying.
The casino industry’s brightest stars have all but written off the Bay State after watching Steve Wynn get humiliated by Foxboro voters and fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a Dorchester native, throwing the towel in after years of toying with a return to his home state.
You can forget about any other big name players popping up – what you see is what you get at this point. The only real dogfight right now is for the remaining Western Massachusetts license.
The only surprise remaining is not that the Bay State’s barely six-month-old casino law is in shambles, but why so many otherwise smart people never saw this coming?
Fantasy Meets Reality
Sadly, it’s not the way casino legislation was sold to the public – not even close.
The newly formed Massachusetts Gaming Commission was supposed to be working overtime by this point fielding bids worth hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from Las Vegas tycoons eager to roll out slot machines in a state whose residents spend more per capita on lottery tickets than anywhere else in the country.
The highest rollers would then be given the privilege of doing business in Massachusetts, building huge betting and entertainment palaces that would employ thousands, both to build and then operate.
Goodbye blue collar recession and hello poker, roulette and black jack!
But the only problem was that all this was pure fantasy, with no relationship to the realities of developing big projects of any kind in Massachusetts, let alone big casinos.
The Bay State – for good reason – has earned a notorious reputation for chewing up and spitting out big development projects, from new waterfront neighborhoods to sports stadiums.
Among our other worst-kept secrets is the fact that just about any casino proposed for a suburb or small-town will have to garner a two-thirds majority at town meeting to pass. That’s what it takes to change the zoning rules on development sites in most Massachusetts towns – and, given that gambling was illegal until last fall, there are no tracts already pre-approved for casino development.
But if anything, legislative leaders pandered to this sentiment, adding additional, unneeded protections to the already formidable arsenal of local control weapons. The best-known requirement has been a community-wide referendum, which seems overkill given the two-thirds town meeting vote already faced by casino developers.
But there are many other rings to kiss as well, from the required, multimillion-dollar agreement with officials in the host community to separate deals with officials in surrounding towns and beyond. Even music halls in Worcester, where no casino is planned, are primed for a share of the loot.
Only Insiders Need Apply
None of this should come as a surprise, especially to readers of this column, which has predicted for well more than a year that “competition” for casino licenses in Massachusetts would be the ultimate insiders’ game.
But our state leaders appear incapable of taking in the bigger picture and seeing just how inhospitable Massachusetts must look to potential casino developers. We are parochial to the extreme – and the advantage goes to those who know who to work the system, not those who would buck it.
All these barriers, from old zoning laws to new casino-law mandates, makes it all but impossible for a brash outsider like Wynn or Adelson to charge in and make a bid. Rather, the casino contenders still standing have been at this game for years .
Caesars Entertainment chief Gary Loveman is the biggest name on the $1 billion Suffolk casino proposal, but the real drivers are horseracing enthusiast and developer Richard Fields and high-powered Boston business leader Joe O’Donnell.
Fields bought a controlling stake in the track in 2007 and has slowly but steadily built up support for expanded gambling at Suffolk Downs. O’Donnell knows Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino well, and understands perfectly the maneuvering and deal-making it takes to get a major project approved in Massachusetts.
Unlike many suburban communities, zoning rules in Boston are ultimately at the mercy of the mayor and his powerful development agency, the Boston Redevelopment Authority. No two-thirds town meeting vote to contend with.
At this point, the only real competition Suffolk faces is veteran developer David Nunes, a dark-horse in this race who hopes to announce financial backers over the summer for his proposed Milford casino.
And, after winning backing from Asian casino tiger Genting Group, the Mashpee Wampanoag are closing in on a state compact, one that will all but hand the tribe control of the casino license for Southeastern Massachusetts.
The competition for casino licenses is over in Eastern Massachusetts. Now the question becomes whether insiders at Suffolk Downs and within the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe can finish the job and walk away with two of the most valuable casino licenses east of Las Vegas.
