Savior for Showboat?; Steve Wynn to build locals casino

Bart Blatstein has emerged as the potential savior for the Showboat, currently a millstone around Stockton University‘s neck. If so, it will be a bittersweet coup for the developer, as it’s the second time he’s missed out on a gaming license, first being passed over for Philadelphia‘s final casino concession and now inheriting a casino whose gambling entitlement was revoked by Caesars Entertainment. A Philadelphia Inquirer source says Stockton will make back its $18 million purchase price and then some, though perhaps not enough to recover $8 million in upkeep costs.

Stockton found itself stuck with a white elephant when Caesars finked out on a promise to remove a covenant with Trump Entertainment Resorts requiring the Showboat to be run as a “first-class” casino-hotel. However, in thwarting Stockton (“You do not see a college on the Las Vegas Strip,” Trump Resorts huffed), TER may have outsmarted itself. Blatstein is a resourceful developer who has the wherewithal and imagination to convert the ‘Boat into a far better hotel than fast-sinking Trump Taj Mahal. He’s also no stranger to the market, already owning and operating Pier Shops at Caesars. But he’ll have to deal with pest Glenn Straub who, despite being told by the courts to bugger off, is still trying to enforce a voided purchase agreement for the hotel.

* Is Steve Wynn planning to fly Chinese gamblers en masse to Boston to make his nut at Wynn Everett? One rather giddy — and uncredited — source claims this is so. “If you’re a member of China’s wealthy elite and you’re a regular at Wynn Macau and your kid is at Harvard, you’re going to stay at Wynn Everett when you come to visit the kid.  Hell, you’ll want to visit more often because you’ll have the casino as your base camp,” the argument runs.

Turning to facts, however, we find Wynn Resorts telling the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs, “The MBTA’s Orange Line is a key component of the project’s transportation strategy to maximize patron and employee use of non-automobile travel modes. A significant proportion of patrons [emphasis added] and employees are expected to travel on the Orange Line.” So we can infer from this that the local player base is going to be Wynn’s bread and butter. If so, it explains why he’s helping underwrite mass transit and alleviate vehicular traffic. Either way, I’m sure there will be enough casual tourists in the Boston market to help Wynn make ends meet.

* Casino taxation is no longer the golden goose for states that it was before the Great Recession … and millennials’ disinterest in traditional gambling is likely to make that scenario worse.

* Jeffrey Gural isn’t just relying on an amped-up financial commitment to clinch New York State‘s fourth casino license for Tioga Downs. He’s pitching the racino’s record of philanthropic activity, including a six-figure infusion to the Tioga Center Central School District, which came atop the track’s statutory payments to the school district. “He can make these donations, Gural said” at a media event to plead his case, “because unlike many other gambling and racing operations, Tioga Downs is backed mainly by himself and a handful of other investors, so it is not beholden to a big corporation and stockholders demanding returns,” reported a local newspaper.