November 06, 2013|By BRIAN DOWLING, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , The Hartford Courant
Mohegan Sun and its supporters are seeking a recount of votes from Tuesday's election in Palmer, Mass. that narrowly rejected plans for the $1 billion resort casino, a last effort to save the development that many say is necessary for the health of the tribe's gaming business.
If passed, the Palmer vote would show Massachusetts gaming regulators that the majority of voters agreed to host the casino, but current vote totals indicate residents narrowly rejected the plan. A Mohegan loss would apparently leave MGM Resorts International's Springfield casino – already approved by voters earlier this year – as the last proposal standing from a field of western Massachusetts projects that once was five deep.
Town Manager Charlie Blanchard confirmed some residents have picked up petitions to gather signatures for a recount.
The recount offers Mohegan Sun a chance to stay in the competition for the sole casino license in western Massachusetts. It comes as Mohegan Sun and supporters expressed concern "with possible irregularities in the balloting process that were observed on Election Day by poll watchers and voters," the company said in a written statement late Wednesday.
Mohegan Sun said it has "great respect for the process and strong level of voter engagement on both sides of this issue, and believe this action is appropriate to ensure an accurate count of all ballots."
Elsewhere in the Northeast, voters confronted decisions about the placement and future of gaming in their communities. New York voters approved a referendum to add four casinos, with the possibility of three more after seven years.
In East Boston, residents voted down a casino proposal by Suffolk Downs. The proposal, which straddles that community and Revere, Mass., is currently without a operator after Caesars Entertainment left the group of developers following concerns about a business partner in one of its other hotels.
Between the Palmer and New York votes, "both are setbacks for Mohegan Sun," said Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and an expert on gambling in New England.
Strategically, the Massachusetts casino — with an indoor water park, two hotels, retail shops and restaurants — should have helped Mohegan Sun win more gaming dollars spread increasingly thin through the region, Barrow said. The added plans for a handful of casinos in New York will only ramp up competition.
"The market is definitely becoming saturated. You can keep adding casinos, but you're seeing that the scale gets smaller and smaller," Barrow said.
Moody's, the investor service and credit ratings agency, warned in August that if Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods fail in their bids for casinos in Massachusetts their gaming revenues would continue to fall. Foxwoods' plan for the eastern Massachusetts casino license in Milford, Mass., goes before voters in that town November 19.
The investor service, in a comment on the passage of the New York referendum, said the Connecticut casinos would benefit from pursuing their previously announced plans for expansion in the Catskills.
"They would benefit by diversifying into New York to protect from potential cannibalization of their Connecticut facilities," the report said. "If they were to lose in both states" — Massachusetts and New York — "they would face continuing deterioration in gaming revenue amid competiition from neighboring jurisdictions."
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will award a license next spring, and construction could start soon afterward. A casino is expected to open in 2016. The western Massachusetts casino will be one of three regional resort casinos that the state will allow as a result of legislation passed in 2011. The others are in Greater Boston and in southeastern Massachusetts.
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