Mayor Martin Walsh is not letting the proposed casino in neighboring Everett fall off his radar.
The City of Boston will be hosting a public meeting on the proposed Wynn casino on Tuesday, February 4th at 6:00 p.m. at the Charlestown High School, 240 Medford Street.
“The City of Boston Public Meeting on the Proposed Wynn Casino has been rescheduled to Tuesday, February 4th at 6 p.m.,” said City of Boston’s Executive Director of Gaming Development Elizabeth DelloRusso. “Due to the importance of this issue, the City would like to ensure maximum public representation and participation from the community and its elected officials.
The meeting will focus on the City of Boston’s review of the proposed Wynn casino.
Since taking office earlier this month, one of Walsh’s first tasks was to pore over the 43,000 pages of documents from both the Wynn and Mohegan Sun casino proposals and make an educated decision before entering into any agreement with either.
However, the Mass Gaming Commission denied Walsh’s request for a 30 day extension to digest the material. Walsh said he was disappointed in the Gaming Commission’s failure to grant Boston the extension requested so he could find concrete ways to protect both the Charlestown and East Boston neighborhoods from any negative impacts and make sure those impacts were mitigated.In response to the denial Walsh and the City of Boston petitioned the Massachusetts Gaming Commission in order to preserve the interests of the City, its residents, businesses and visitors, in the development of proposed Wynn and Mohegan Sun resort destination casinos. The petition preserves the City’s right to assert host community status for both proposals, without waiving it’s rights to surrounding community status. The petition also asks the Gaming Commission to compel both proponents to share information with the communities that would be most impacted by their proposals.
“We believe this unrestricted route is the best path forward to protect the residents of Charlestown and East Boston, and the City of Boston as a whole,” said Walsh. “These applicants must have a more open dialogue with the people of Boston, particularly those neighborhoods that will be most impacted. At any time, if the facts indicate that Boston is a host city, we preserve its
right to withdraw from surrounding community negotiations.”
While preserving its rights to host status, the City’s Petition also asked the Gaming Commission to have both the Wynn and Mohegan Sun applicants supplement their filings with the Commission, and if they fail to do that, for the Commission to designate Boston a surrounding community.