The ink isn’t yet dry on the agreement between Suffolk Downs and the city of Boston to develop a casino on the East Boston race track, but Boston seems to have scored a pretty good deal.

The city would get a $1 billion Caesars resort and casino, projected to bring at least $32 million in annual revenue (potentially up to $52 million) and 4,000 permanent jobs. East Boston, the casino’s “host community,” would get an upfront payment of $33.4 million.

On the surface, the deal is a boon to the city of Boston. Along with the money, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said the casino would help small businesses.

It would inject much-needed cash into the neighborhood and into the city of Boston’s coffers. It would give jobs to lots of people who need them – although whether those jobs will be good-paying ones is another story entirely.

As District City Councilor Sal Lamattina, a lifelong East Boston resident who praised the deal at a news conference last week, said: “This agreement will transform my neighborhood.”

The agreement would also save jobs at Suffolk Downs, according to principal owner Joe O’Donnell.

But this is only on the surface. What the city failed to do was think out of the box. Casinos are a destination point, much like Suffolk Downs was at one point. People who go to casinos typically don’t go there after patronizing local businesses. There are no windows in a casino for a reason.

If East Boston voters and the Massachusetts Gaming Commission approve the development, only time will tell if a casino is sustainable or just a short-term benefit made at the tail end of Menino’s tenure. n

A Final Chapter?

It was yet another reminder that the housing crisis did not start in a vacuum.

With foreclosures in Massachusetts at a low point due to an improving economy and state legislation aimed at keeping people in their homes, the trumpeting of news that payments had been distributed for those affected by subprime lending seemed like good closure.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley announced recently that the commonwealth had distributed $5 million in checks to 500 borrowers affected by Sand Canyon Corp.’s predatory lending practices.

According to Coakley’s office, Sand Canyon, formerly known as Option One Mortgage Corp. and a subsidiary of H&R Block, was the same company that knew that many of the loans it originated posed an “excessive risk of default and foreclosure” and were doomed to fail “but that it originated them nonetheless in order to sell them to the secondary market and realize a quick profit.”

The payments are part of the settlement Coakley’s office entered into in August 2011, in which Option One agreed to pay $9.8 million to resolve claims of discriminatory and unfair mortgage lending practices.

The allegations of discriminatory lending practices added another layer of immorality to the subprime lending tale.

Coakley alleged that Option One gave mortgage brokers free rein to charge excessive and unjustified fees, causing African-American and Latino borrowers to pay more money, on average, for their loans than other, similarly-situated borrowers.

Another part of the agreement that’s running its course? Loan modifications for the affected borrowers. Coakley’s office said 812 borrowers have received those modifications – resulting in $86 million in principal reduction and more than $38 million in monthly payments reduced.

The announcement signals the denouement – or at least the penultimate chapter – in one of the more troubling aspects of our recent history.