That’s how Mitchell Etess, the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority’s chief executive officer, drew the battle lines Wednesday within the budding competitors for any western Massachusetts casino license. Addressing the Quaboag Hills Chamber of Commerce at a vocational higher school right here, he made it clear which of your competitors he believes is most effective equipped to rescue the economic climate of a chunk of your Bay State that incorporates Springfield and Worcester and a large amount of rural in between.
“We’re right here; we’ve been right here,” stated Etess, whose authority operates Mohegan Sun in rural southeastern Connecticut and Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs in Pennsylvania. “We know what New Englanders want inside a casino and we know ways to give it to them.”
Following all, Etess mentioned, Mohegan Sun and “Brand X down the road,” which will be Foxwoods Resort Casino, are the standard-bearers on the “rural destination model” for casinos. It’s that model the Mohegan authority would duplicate on a somewhat smaller scale in Palmer if it wins the one casino license that the Massachusetts Gaming Commission is expected to award for western Massachusetts.
So far, the authority’s competition is entirely centered in Springfield, the state’s third-largest city, exactly where as many as 4 suitors, all of them main gaming players, have indicated they’re going to pursue downtown tasks. One, Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International, already has supplied information of its $800 million strategy, has paid a $400,000 application fee and on Tuesday, opened an office in downtown Springfield.
Ameristar Casinos, also based in Las Vegas, is filing particulars of its Springfield proposal this week, based on a organization official who attended Wednesday’s occasion. Penn National of Wyomissing, Pa., and Tricky Rock International of Orlando, Fla., also have expressed interest in Springfield.
“Most folks in New England are unfamiliar with urban casinos,” Etess stated. “If you ask them what a casino looks like in Detroit or Gary, Indiana, they do not know. Mohegan Sun has altered the way persons think of casinos. … What folks (inside the market) have come to understand is that what individuals are going to like in New England is rural.”
When one particular of your dozens of little small business owners within the audience asked in regards to the public’s perception that the “fix is in” for Springfield, Etess mentioned he located that difficult to think. He noted that the state approved expanded gambling with all the creation of jobs and economic improvement in thoughts and stated a Palmer casino will be within the finest position to deliver on that promise.
“The Palmer web page will drive the most revenue for the whole western Massachusetts area,” Etess said.
Another organization owner asked how the Mohegan authority may very well be pursuing a casino in Massachusetts at the same time it is laying off workers at Mohegan Sun.
Etess mentioned the a lot more than 300 layoffs announced Sept. 27 need to not raise a “red flag” in regard to the viability of gaming in the Bay State. He stated the authority must “right-size” the workforce at each and every of its properties and that the economic climate in Connecticut, which presents most of Mohegan Sun’s organization, is “worse” than it is elsewhere.
The authority’s dedication to the Palmer project, beginning with its 2008 leasing of a 152-acre web site off Exit eight on the Massachusetts Turnpike, followed by its opening of a downtown Palmer workplace in 2009, has never wavered, he mentioned.
That long-standing dedication is a part of the purpose why the authority has located it unnecessary to spend the $400,000 license-application fee prior to it really is due subsequent year, Etess stated.
“If I had been in one neighborhood and moved to a different neighborhood, I’d likely spend the fee to show my commitment,” he stated, a reference to MGM Resorts, which has abandoned a casino project it had proposed earlier this year in Brimfield, a little town adjacent to Palmer, prior to unveiling its Springfield program in August. The provider considered the Brimfield web-site unsuitable.
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