Wynn Gets A Boston-area Casino License

Wynn Resorts has won a license to bring a $1.6 billion casino to Everett, Mass., a Boston-area town with a polluted waterfront and a big bet on gaming to raise its middling fortunes. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission voted 3 to 1 on Tuesday afternoon to award the sole license available near Boston to the Las Vegas–based gaming giant Wynn Resorts — and not to Mohegan Sun, the Connecticut-based developer that had pitched to build a $1.1 million casino in Revere, another Boston-area town that is seeing tough times. Both towns had, over the past several months, staged public relations campaigns in which each claimed to be harder-up and less attractive than the other and thus more in need of a casino’s heady injection of jobs and cash. Meanwhile, the two gaming juggernauts had each wagered that their stimulus package was richer than the others and would lift not just the fortunes of a single town but also plug holes in Massachusetts’ hemorrhaging coffers. “You won’t recognize the city of Everett, hopefully, in 10 years,” Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria told the Boston Globe. “We will no longer be the butt end of the city of Boston,” he said.