From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
The casino mania continues apace, with the latest scheme being a proposal to build a slots palace, and, incredibly, horse track, in Wareham, near the Bourne Bridge, the western road access to Cape Cod. If you think Cape traffic is bad now…. (I used to love horse tracks but not so much now that I know more about how some of the animals are treated.)
But wait! There’s more! A Chicago developer called Neil Bluhm continues to push for a casino in poor old Brockton, once “The Shoe Capital of the World’’; the Mashpee Wampanoag Indians still want to put up a casino in Taunton, once “The Silver City,’’ and the Aquinnah Wampanoag Indians continue to demand a gambling joint on Martha’s Vineyard near the famously colorful clay cliffs called Gay Head.
As our region continues to move toward casino cannibalization it looks like IGT, the gambling systems tech company, is a better, well, bet for Rhode Island than Twin River, more of whose suckers may decide to take their chances at the other nearby casinos to pop up. Of course, that’s already happening at the huge and glitzy Encore mega casino in the traditionally poor and gritty inner Boston suburb of Everett. Encore seems to have an especially potent allure for high rollers at its table games, and there are plenty of rich people in the region.
Still, I think a lot of the folks from southeastern New England flocking to Encore right now are going there mostly out of curiosity. When that fades, and winter weather arrives, making travel to Greater Boston even more unpleasant than it is now, I think that will fade a bit, even with such come-ons as the luxury bus service between Gillette Stadium and Encore.
Anyway, IGT, as an international tech company serving a wide customer base, would seem a sturdier reed for Rhode Island to lean on for economic development than one casino company – that is, if IGT actually stays in the Ocean State! Corporate promises about staying in localities and states that have offered companies assorted incentives such as tax breaks tend to evaporate remarkably often.
Meanwhile, we’ll see what the effects of online sports betting on casinos turn out to be….
