| Is it finally time to put Suffolk Downs out to pasture?
East Boston’s stunning rejection of Suffolk’s grand plans to build a billion-dollar gambling resort should serve as a wakeup call to Boston Mayor-elect Marty Walsh as well as the track’s casino-hungry owners.
Seemingly undeterred, Suffolk’s owners, like down-on-their-luck gamblers doubling down on their last credit card, are now off chasing a somewhat long-shot plan to build a casino on a portion of the track that spills over into neighboring Revere.
But the odds are getting longer by the day while the competition grows fierce. Las Vegas tycoon Steve Wynn, who has a rival proposal to build a $1.3 billion casino in Everett, is surely licking his chops right now.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for all involved to look beyond Suffolk’s latest casino scheme and instead explore the highest and best long-term use for the track’s sprawling Eastie pasturage.
And that’s not a gambling palace and surely not a nearly broke racetrack, but good, old fashioned commercial and residential development.
Unlocking Suffolk’s True Potential
You don’t have to be Sam Zell, the brilliant but ruthless real estate investor, to see the huge development value ready to be unlocked at Suffolk Downs.
At a time when home and condo prices are soaring out of reach for middle class families in Boston, Suffolk’s 110 or so Boston acres are a huge potential asset, ground zero for the Hub’s next big mixed-used neighborhood of shops and homes. (Fan Pier, by contrast, is just 21 acres.)
It’s even been looked at over the years as a possible site for a sports arena, should the Celtics ever wriggle loose from the grasp of TD Garden and Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs.
As he takes over cash-hungry Boston City Hall, Walsh, the former building trades’ union chief, should see the obvious value as well. After all, a mega development with millions of square feet in shops, restaurants, homes and who knows what else will pay millions in taxes, certainly far more than what the track is shelling out now to the taxman.
Don’t take my word for it – Suffolk’s investors include mega mall developer Steve Karp, builder of the CambridgeSide Galleria and shopping meccas like it across the country. His latest projects include the redevelopment of Pier 4 on Boston’s waterfront.
In fact, Karp has already demonstrated the development potential of Suffolk’s sprawling acreage, having broken off a piece of the track’s property in Revere for a successful, Target-anchored shopping center.
But Karp, a minority investor, is not calling the shots.
In fact, it’s pretty clear that the track’s lead owner, New York horse racing enthusiast and former Seminole casino builder Richard Fields, is not ready to fold yet.
And that right now is a big problem. The best-case scenario for Suffolk’s owners is that they defy the odds, get a green light from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to submit a new, Revere-based bid, and then beat out both Wynn’s Everett proposal and Foxwoods’ Milford bid as well.
And what happens to Suffolk Downs? Well the track, now across the border in East Boston, becomes a cherished antique at best, an afterthought at worst, for its owners, suddenly engrossed with their Revere casino.
However, the worst case scenario, in which Suffolk owners can’t make the Revere plan work but decide to hang onto the track anyway, may be the most likely one at this point.
In this case, the track is kept on life support, its valuable acreage languishing as its owners hold out hope of someday, somehow hitting the casino jackpot, waiting for a friendlier governor or calling in a few favors among the track’s long-time friends in the Legislature.
But at some point, you just have to cut your losses.
Time To Face Reality
Make no mistake, Suffolk’s years-long push to build an East Boston gambling and entertainment palace is nothing short of a complete train wreck.
Sure, Suffolk’s gambit to build a billion-dollar gambling and entertainment destination was fine while it had a viable shot at becoming reality.
It certainly would have jumpstarted development on the track’s long underused acreage a lot faster than any traditional retail or residential project would have.
And at one point, Suffolk was the leading candidate for the Boston-area casino license, one of three being auctioned off by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
But that moment has come and gone.
Things started to go downhill late last year. After a humiliating rejection in Foxborough, Wynn popped up next door in Everett, with the King of Las Vegas resurrecting his casino plans after swiftly winning over city leaders and residents.
This spring, things took another turn for the worse when Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, a long-time supporter of Suffolk’s casino plans, announced plans to retire at the end of his term this coming January.
Finally, Suffolk and its high-powered group of Boston and New York owners/investors were embarrassingly slow on the uptake when it came to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s review of its much touted casino partner, Caesars.
Suffolk’s owners said they were blindsided when the gaming commission’s investigative team recommended Caesars be barred from bidding on the Boston-area casino license. They apparently never saw it coming and blamed Caesars for not giving them the heads up.
If true, that’s hardly very savvy and not exactly a great recommendation for a potential casino developer and owner.
East Boston voters rewarded all this fumbling with a big fat 56-44 percent rejection, despite a lavish, $2 million campaign by the track targeted at the neighborhood.
Now Suffolk is pursuing its last-ditch Plan B, one that would cram its proposed $1 billion casino complex onto the 52 acres of the racetrack’s property that spills over into neighboring Revere, or about a third of the total.
Yet figuring out how to shoehorn the casino onto that smaller piece of land in Revere may be the least of Suffolk’s problems.
While Revere voters did endorse the casino proposal that Eastie residents rejected, extending that agreement to cover a whole new proposal seems a stretch.
After all, Revere voters gave a green light to an agreement that stipulated there would be no significant construction in their city, literally, with the Suffolk casino to be built solely on the larger, Boston portion of the track’s property.
Now I’m no lawyer, but really, that seems far more than a minor technicality.
It’s hard to see how the super-cautious Massachusetts Gaming Commission lets that one slide, but given all the twists and turns we’ve seen in the casino licensing process, who really knows.
But if the commission decides that Revere has to vote again to endorse what amounts to a significantly altered proposal, Suffolk will find itself beaten by the clock.
There simply won’t be enough time to meet a looming Dec. 31 deadline for casino developers interested in the Boston area license to submit their bids.
And Steve Crosby, the tough-talking chairman of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on leave as head of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s McCormack Institute, has made clear there will be no extensions.
What’s needed here is an intervention of sorts, whether by Walsh, Boston’s soon-to-be new mayor, or Suffolk’s many State House friends, with House Speaker Robert DeLeo, whose father once worked at Suffolk, leading the pack.
Someone needs to take away the car keys – and fast.
