Wynn versus Suffolk Downs finds Wynn in lead

Those following the casino application and licensing drama are a small crowd compared with those yawning about the process and the time it has consumed.
There is a great deal of not caring held among the people of Massachusetts about casinos – and three are coming in 2014 although the first openings may not come until 2015.
All the major action in this expanded gaming tableau is taking place in Everett and to a lesser extent these days in the Revere/East Boston nexus. The referendum in Everett last week on whether or not that industrial, middle class city would welcome a casino showed that those against such a facility on a contaminated 35-acre site were very hard to find.
Eighty-six per cent of the more than 5500 who voted cast a ballot in favor of Steve Wynn’s planned $1.2 billion investment. The general sentiment in Everett is that the casino is a bonus, a cash cow, a jobs provider and an overall plus for the hardscrabble city.
It is all of those indeed – and more.
Wynn’s salient into Everett has not caused the folks at Suffolk Downs to change their business model at all as they too go about the task of trying to gain a license at the famed racetrack.
The sweeping and impressive referendum victory in Everett is obviously problematic for Suffolk Downs. Wynn is on the rise, or so it appears. Suffolk Downs is moving into the sunset. That's the perception in a local world where nearly everything these days is measured by perception.
The leadership at Suffolk has not yet responded in a meaningful way to Wynn’s Everett blitzkrieg – a sure sign that the folks at the track continue to believe that Wynn will never build on the Everett property and is simply making waves to bother the Suffolk Downs partnership who he doesn’t care for.
In Revere, Mayor Dan Rizzo and his team have settled with the track with a host city agreement yet to be released. The East Boston/Boston host city agreement remains unfinished with palpable visceral uncertainties about its final form.
Wynn’s effort in a few months has dwarfed the yeoman’s work done faithfully for six years by Suffolk Downs.
Even after the stunning Wynn driven referendum victory in Everett, it remains business as usual for Suffolk Downs.
The ship is sinking and they continue to tell people everything is fine. “Just watch us when we roll out our host agreement and then have our referendum. That will send Wynn running,” they say. There is no effort to bail the water or to order that the lifeboats be readied for action.
In a gaming scenario where it is the giant billionaire Wynn versus the millionaires at Suffolk Downs, Wynn is today in the lead after using his money and business savvy to wrap up nicely the city of Everett.
He has accomplished more to establish himself as the leader in the casino application race in five months than Suffolk Downs accomplished in six years.
Wynn is rising. Suffolk Downs is going in the other direction.
No matter what it does in the weeks to come, Suffolk Downs faces the difficult task of at least matching the 86 per cent approval rate achieved in Everett’s referendum in East Boston and Revere.
Those are numbers nearly impossible to match let alone to come close to.
The Gaming Commission is watching and waiting.
Even a 70 per cent approval rating in the East Boston/Revere referendum which has not yet been set won’t look as good to the commission.
The ship is taking on water. The ship gives the appearance of beginning to sink. The leadership at Suffolk Downs is moving ahead business as usual – but with Wynn in the game, this contest is now anything but business as usual.