Does location benefit the Leominster slots proposal?
COURTESY
An artist's rendering of the Leominster slots facility. The developers are pledging $1 million a year to a medical device industry program.
David McKeehan, president of North Central Mass. chamber: “Location is paramount” in Leominster proposal.
For the past three years, it’s been hard to get away from questions about gambling in Massachusetts. Headlines have been filled with proposals, disqualifications, public meetings and community votes. Within the next five weeks, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission plans to finally make one firm decision: where to site the state’s only slots parlor.
In the running are Raynham and Plainville, two southeastern Massachusetts towns with a history of racetrack gambling, and Leominster, where gambling would be a brand new industry.
To David McKeehan, president of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce, there are obvious geographic reasons for the commission to pick Leominster. For one thing, both Raynham and Plainville are close to the Twin River casino in Rhode Island and even closer to Taunton, a proposed site for one of the state’s three resort casinos, potentially diluting the pool of potential gamblers. For another, the specific Leominster site on Jungle Road that the Cordish Cos. has chosen for its plan is right off Interstate 190, a spot that creates few traffic worries.
The right place?
“I think clearly the location is paramount,” McKeehan said. “Clearly, there has to be a strong benefit to the commonwealth in terms of revenue that will be generated there and also because of the benefit that a destination in North Central Massachusetts will have in terms of visitor traffic and economic spinoff.”
New Hampshire, which is considering its own plan to legalize gambling, has found that the Leominster proposal presents the greatest threat to a possible casino there. Cordish has said a slots parlor in the North Central area would prevent Massachusetts residents from traveling north if the Granite State were to move forward with a casino.
In applying for the slots parlor license, the three applicants were asked about economic spinoff. Most obviously, all three promised annual payments to their host communities. Cordish is offering Leominster a minimum of $3.8 million a year between taxes and other payments, or more depending on gambling revenues. Raynham Park promised Raynham a bit more than $1 million in an annual mitigation payment, while Penn National pledged $3.9 million in taxes and other payments to Plainville.
In some cases, the developers also promised cash to surrounding communities. Cordish reached agreements with Bolton and Lancaster — towns along Route 117 that are likely to experience traffic impacts from drivers cutting through from Interstate 495 — pledging each town $35,000 a year. Other communities around Leominster would get $5,000 a year.
When it comes to projected tax revenue, Cordish fell between the other two applicants, predicting annual state and municipal revenue generation of $110 million, compared with $76.2 million for Penn National and $140.6 million for Raynham Park.
Cordish also said its slots parlor would create 600 full-time-equivalent positions, a number comparable to the other two applicants’. Its revenue-growth projections for regional businesses that the site would create was on the low side — just $25 million to $29.4 million a year, compared with $43.4 million to $125.2 million for Penn National and $159 million to $192 million for Raynham Park.
McKeehan said the Cordish proposal sets itself apart — particularly to the local business community — with a promise to pay $1 million a year into a program designed to strengthen the medical device industry in North Central Massachusetts. An expansion of an existing initiative at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the so-called M3D3 plan, would help early-stage plastics manufacturers in the medical device sector establish operations in the corridor between Lowell and Worcester.
“That really is unexpected and unique and certainly welcome in our market, which already has a number of companies that are in medical device component manufacturing,” McKeehan said. “Bringing that kind of focus through their slots proposal is really innovative.”
Opponent worries over gambling addictions, more traffic
But to Arline Stith, a vocal opponent of slots in Leominster, the pitfalls in allowing Cordish in are obvious. She argues that the developer and local officials have downplayed traffic issues that are likely to cause problems on routes 2 and 12 and elsewhere. And she worries that the development would bring an increase in gambling addictions and associated crime and social problems, along with possible drops in property values of nearby homes.
Drawing on news reports about other casinos in the Northeast, she also says an eventual drop in gambling revenues could have unintended consequences.
“The region is oversaturated,” she said. “Once a community starts becoming dependent on this type of income and then that income declines, it’s the taxpayer who’s going to be picking it up.”
Stith said plenty of people in the area are still against local gambling.
Assist for job training
Whichever community ends up winning the license can expect help with training local residents. All three developers have reached agreements with the Massachusetts Community College Casinos Careers Training Institute on that front. They have also promised to work with local vendors and contractors and to organize cross-marketing efforts with hotels, restaurants and other area destinations.
That last piece is particularly relevant, McKeehan said, particularly in conjunction with Great Wolf Lodge’s plans to expand the water park at the Holiday Inn-CoCo Key location in Fitchburg.
“We think that has a real benefit,” he said.
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