Suffolk down but not out
By 
Boston lost a protracted, petty-looking battle to bring a proposed Everett casino into its orbit earlier this year. Now, with Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s former casino dance partner Suffolk Downs rebuffed by East Boston voters and eyeing a massive gambling facility just across the city line in Revere, Boston faces the prospect of re-running the same cross-border obstruction play it ran in Everett, but actually having to make it stick this time around.
The Suffolk Downs horse track straddles the Boston-Revere line. The track’s developers had initially contemplated building the vast majority of its proposed gambling facility on the Boston side of the line. The bulk of the site’s acreage lies in Boston. Its access road, parking lots, and track grandstands all sit in Boston. The casino plan that Suffolk Downs has been pushing for the past two years would have seen casino construction, along with traffic and parking infrastructure improvements, occurring chiefly in Boston. That’s all out the window now, after East Boston voters rejected the Suffolk Downs casino proposal by a 12-point margin.
Suffolk Downs and Revere officials now plan to charge ahead with an effort to rejigger plans and propose a casino solely on the Revere side of the horse track’s Boston-Revere property. “I’m not issuing 350 pink slips and telling the horsemen they can never come back before we have exhausted all of our options,” Suffolk COO Chip Tuttle tells the Globe today. Tuttle and his partners are now scrambling to reposition their proposed casino within the Revere portion of their property, and to renegotiate the host community agreement Revere voters approved last week.
Relocating a Suffolk Downs casino to Revere would mean turning the site’s previous plans upside-down. The Revere side of the track houses its back entrance, a parking lot for jockeys, and acres of horse stables. Suffolk’s old casino plans had these facilities remaining largely untouched, except for the addition of some surface parking lots; now, Suffolk and Revere are talking about uprooting the track’s horse racing operations, moving them over to Boston, and cramming acres of parking, hotel space and gaming floors onto a sliver of the track’s real estate along Route 145.
These are the arguments Menino tried to make earlier this year, when he tried to bully Steve Wynn out of town. A tiny sliver of Wynn’s Everett site lies in Boston, as does the main road running past Wynn’s property. Menino, a Suffolk Downs partisan, based his argument on the fact that Wynn’s customers would use Boston roads to access the Everett casino. He tried to argue that since Wynn was proposing to tidy up all of the post-industrial wasteland his casino would rise above, including the real estate in Boston, Wynn should have to negotiate a host community mitigation pact with Boston.
Menino’s claims were laughed down, largely because they were seen as a ploy to give Suffolk Downs leverage over the competition in Everett. Now, however, the prospect of Suffolk Downs trying to leverage infrastructure improvements in Boston in service of a casino across the city line is very real. If he wanted to, Menino could make a plausible argument that a Revere-only casino couldn’t realistically operate without leveraging Boston land, and that East Boston’s referendum last week shouldn’t allow such work to happen. The question is whether, after Menino’s episode with Wynn, anyone would listen.
–PAUL MCMORROW
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Former state representative Paul Kujawski, who was hired to raise money for a new library in Webster, fails to bring in even a nickel, the Telegram & Gazette reports.
Marshfield’s effort to halt implementation of the controversial new federal flood maps has cleared the first hurdle as FEMA officials accepted the town’s appeals and delayed its final determination of the maps for at least 60 days.
John Nucci argues that, with a casino behind it, East Boston is free to focus on waterfront development.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
The New Republic says income inequality could become the hot issue of the next presidential race. If that happens, Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare is … Elizabeth Warren. Warren is also striking terror into the hearts of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives, Politico reports. A pro-Hillary Clinton super PAC is already raising and spending money, ahead of the 2016 election.
Architect Daniel Libeskind argues that if New York could find consensus in the battles over the World Trade Center site, Washington should be able to find common ground, too.
In a refrain that will sound familiar in Boston, New York mayor-elect Bill de Blasio says that while he’s a friend of labor, he can’t afford to pay all his friends well. New York magazine rounds up de Blasio’s looming headaches.
CASINOS
The MetroWest Daily News supports a casino in Milford.
ELECTIONS
Lawrence mayor William Lantigua, in a speech at a Spanish-language radio station, calls for a recount of his unofficial 57-vote loss to Daniel Rivera, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Communities of color were the key to Marty Walsh’s victory in the Boston mayoral race, CommonWealth reports. Boston magazine maps Boston’s mayoral contest.
Alarmed by the flood of unrestricted — and undisclosed — independent PAC expenditures in the Boston mayor’s race, Secretary of State Bill Galvin and several lawmakers plan to file legislation that would require rapid disclosure of donors by such groups.
The Globe op-ed page weighs the significance of last week’s mayoral race. CommonWealth’s Paul McMorrow says it’s the arrival in municipal races of super PACs, which helped fuel Marty Walsh’s win. Farah Stockman takes stock of the pluses and minuses of Walsh’s labor identity; Carpenters Union head Mark Erlich focuses on the pluses, and offers a scolding to columnists and editorial writers who opined otherwise.
Attorney General Martha Coakley, now a candidate for governor who is facing scrutiny over her handling of campaign finance matters, was the subject of a potential Federal Election Commission investigation three years ago, the Globe reports.
Independent gubernatorial candidate Evan Falchuk pays a visit to the Gloucester Times. CommonWealth writes about Falchuk and his independent rival, Jeffrey McCormick. Herald columnist Hillary Chabot tells Charlie Baker to take it easy with the regular-guy schtick.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Though 250,000 Massachusetts residents remain unemployed, the Globe reports that the state’s restaurant industry is suffering from a shortage of skilled food-service workers.
After just 17 seasons at Turner Field, the Atlanta Braves are moving to Cobb County with what appears to be a hefty infusion of cash from the county, Governing reports. At Grantland, Atlanta native Rembert Browne paints the Braves’ flight as a symptom of the city’s residential segregation: “One of the defining traits of Atlanta is the way in which people, places, and things run away from each other. One of the most sprawling cities in the world achieves that honor, yes, because there are no geographical boundaries to stop growth, but also because people will go to great lengths to not live among undesirables.”
The upside to the Amazon-US Postal Service partnership is also its downside.
RELIGION
Echoing recent calls by Pope Francis, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley says the Catholic Church need to reassert its focus on the plight of the poor, which often seems to take a back seat to the “culture war” over abortion and gay rights.
EDUCATION
Fall River building officials discovered an original occupancy certificate for the city’s Talbot Middle School that shows the official capacity far beyond what school officials have been using for years.
Lawrence schools partner with enrichment programs, such as the Boys and Girls Club, to extend the school year by about 200 to 300 hours, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
A growing cadre of educators and software developers say video games can be a useful tool in teaching young students science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
HEALTH CARE
State health care exchange websites share the woes of their federal counterpart.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Hingham officials are concerned about an increase in fire risks in the town forest from dead trees killed by a microscopic insect that is infesting woodlands around the state.
