Wynn subtracting one golf course, adding another?; Resorts World Las Vegas postponed again

Although Steve Wynn remains bent upon tearing out Wynn Golf Club on the Strip — in favor of Wynn Paradise Park one day, an NFL stadium the next — he may be planning one for Wynn Boston Harbor. At least that’s the speculation raised by Wynn’s recent purchase of 40 acres of derelict General Electric property. Three of those acres will be dedicated to a public park. As for the remaining 37, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria — riding high after successfully shepherding Wynn Boston Harbor through the political process — has retained Redgate Real Estate Advisors “to help us do some development planning down at the GE site  … We want to get a pedestrian footbridge down there connecting us to Wellington Station.  That change would really drive property values up off of the Main Street area,” says Hizzoner.

Redgate’s official boilerplate boils down to “extracting the best value” for clients from their real estate. Columnist John Hahesy speculates that “Redgate’s involvement leads one to conclude that the GE site redevelopment will consist of a new office park or apartment complex,” perhaps including corporate offices for Wynn. However, he goes on to note that the land would be big enough for a nine-hole golf course or a par-three 18-hole one — and that’s there’s enough adjacent land to be had that Wynn Resorts could build a regular-sized 18-hole course. This naturally presumes that Steve Wynn still thinks a golf course is a good investment, especially in a cold-weather climate, having officially scrapped his Vegas links, which could be played all year ’round.

While I’m agreed with Hahesy that El Steve is probably up to “something bold and unexpected,” I don’t think we should cry “Fore!” just yet. The golf speculation is premised on a source telling Hahesy that DeMaria told him that Wynn told him that he’d be buying vacant industrial land in Everett for a golf course. And we know Steve Wynn changes his mind a lot. He could have been simply thinking out loud, as he is wont to do. Besides, the site that Wynn was discussing with DeMaria was on the opposite side of the Mystic River from Wynn Boston Harbor. However, it would be nice if Wynn continued to pioneer the greening of Everett, as opposed to putting up an office block.

Meanwhile, in Macao, the debut of Wynn Palace may have been a sucess d’estime. Terms like lackluster, sluggish and cannibalization are being used to describe its early
casino-floor action. The good news is that mass-market business increased slightly. The bad news is that Wynn Palace is pulling VIP players from Wynn Macau. Shares of Wynn Resorts, which peaked at $104 prior to the megaresort’s opening dipped to $90/share shortly after its debut, before rallying slightly. According to Bloomberg News, Union Gaming analyst Grant Govertsen wrote that “Visitors are balking at the cost of a gondola ride to the resort and the long walk around the lake to get to the entrance.” Sounds Steve Wynn may have outdone himself in the wrong sort of way. The mogul’s skepticism that even his own resort would move the Macanese needle appears well-founded for now.

* Possibly throwing his weight behind a losing cause, New Jersey Assemblyman Ralph Caputo (D) threw his weight behind a ballot question to end Atlantic City‘s casino monopoly. Boardwalk business interests might rightly query, “Et tu, Ralph?” After all, Caputo chairs the Tourism, Gaming and the Arts Committee, so you’d think he’d have the gambling industry’s back. Not so. Caputo blames opposition to “Powerful and well-heeled political, corporate and labor interests outside New Jersey” that want gaming money to migrate to neighboring states. By Caputo’s logic, it’s worth throwing Atlantic City to the wolves if it means dazzling New Yorkers with megaresorts in, say, the Meadowlands or Jersey City. That’s cold.

* Gaming receipts on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi were flat with last year’s but, at $105 million in July, were enough to offset a 3% decline in the Mississippi River counties. It’s impossible to prognosticate what the future holds for the latter, but recent numbers give one hope that the market is bottoming out.

* In a little-noticed announcement, Genting Group disclosed that the projected opening of Resorts World Las Vegas has been pushed back to somewhere between July and December of 2019, not mid-2018, as stated at groundbreaking. (Remember, the original completion date was to have been this year.) The start of construction has also been delayed, this time to “early 2017.” That’s bad news for casinos like SLS Las Vegas, which stated at its opening that it was hoping to piggyback off business from Resorts World. SLS is going to have to tough it out that much longer and hope that it can act as a “dormitory” for Lucky Dragon players not lucky enough to get one of the latter’s 200 hotel rooms.