Encore Casino – Everett Leader Herald

Encore back in business, MGC lifts all restrictions

A lavish flower display in the lobby greets patrons of the Encore Boston Harbor as COVID restrictions are lifted. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso)

Ornate flower display greets patrons, gaming, hotel, restaurants reopening

By JOSH RESNEK

What a difference a week can make in the life and times of a great casino and hotel.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission’s erasure of nearly all gaming restrictions at Encore will lead to the reopening of the casino and hotel’s nightclub and will ultimately allow for smaller business conventions.

This should lead to the casino’s restaurants getting back into the brisk business.

Encore’s casino managers have just replanted the entire hotel and casino lobby with more than $30,000 worth of white, red, and yellow blooming plants and flowers in what is easily the most impressive display of its kind in New England.

This was done last week.

The MGC voted to allow Encore Casino and Hotel to get back to where it was before the pandemic caused a serious disruption in its business last week, also.

Mayor silent on how much Encore owes of the yearly $30M

By JOSH RESNEK

The mayor remains exquisitely quiet and without a public answer to one of the most important financial difficulties the city faces.

Has Encore paid up its yearly $30M in lieu of tax payment to the treasury or has it not?

This is the question.

The city needs everything it is owed to fulfill its budgetary requirements and spending initiatives.

Without full payment from Encore – which should be paid like a tax bill on time when due – the city likely faces a shortfall that must somehow be made up.

Last year, the Leader Herald reported that Encore had not paid on time or in full, the $30M owe.

Encore unilaterally said it had begun sending the state the Everett payments and that the state was expected to pass the money on to the city.

Efforts to reach out to the mayor regarding this issue have not been answered.

Encore Casino has many hands in play

The Everett skyline with Encore and Exelon most visible across the Mystivc River. (Photo by Jim Mahoney)

Officials ordered to appear at city council to discuss safety issues

By JOSH RESNEK

Encore officials have been ordered to explain public safety preparedness and efforts to maintain control at the casino and hotel due to recent crimes committed there.

We all need to know exactly what is being done to protect the public at the casino and hotel,” Councilor Stephanie Martins told the Leader Herald over the weekend.

“It is our duty to look into policing levels and staffing and that’s what. we’re going to do,” Martins added.

Since the casino and hotel opened, and during the down time experienced because of the COVID-19, Encore Boston Harbor has been the site of drug overdoses, suicides, stabbings, shootings, and fights which spread onto the gaming floor as well as illegal gatherings in the hotel during the virus crisis.

The State Police and Everett Police have made more than several hundred arrests at the facility since it opened.

Martins is set to lead the public discussion about public safety with Encore officials. The many crime and public safety difficulties indicate policing problems, according to Martins.

She believes that there are holes in Encore’s generally stringent, and for the most part effective, public safety efforts.

$B Encore suit moves forward

By LEADER STAFF

In an ongoing federal case with billions of dollars at stake and claims of international bribery, political payoffs, shadowy Mafia figures and rampant sexual misconduct, the First Circuit in Massachusetts tried Monday to figure out whether Massachusetts gaming officials made a mistake in choosing who should build the Encore Casino and Hotel.

The discourse between the attorneys was like a book reading from the pages of Walter Pavlo and Josh Resnek’s annotated investigative book to be published in the spring titled, “Encore-Steve Wynn’s Last Encore.”

The battle over the project — a $2.6 billion resort has in one corner Steve Wynn, the billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate who ultimately got the license, and in the other Suffolk Downs, a Boston-area horse-racing track that opened in 1935 and had been viewed as the local favorite.

Wynn came to Everett and fell in love with 33 acres of the most polluted land in the nation, the former Monsanto Chemical site.

Suffolk sued under federal anti-racketeering law, claiming that Wynn and his company should have been disqualified on the basis of bribery, fraud, and other serious misconduct in which they were engaged.

Wynn Resort’s Maddox optimistic about Encore’s future

Believes that once pandemic eases gaming industry will rebound strong

By JOSH RESNEK

Wynn Resorts Chief Operating Officer Matt Maddox believes that when the worst has passed with the virus, and when the vaccine has been distributed and millions inoculated, that the casino and hotel business will return, and powerfully.

Maddox is an industry legend and leader, who learned nearly all his business skills from his former boss and mentor of 20 years, the founder of the company bearing his name, Steve Wynn.

In a wide variety of interviews given, Maddox recently said that pent up demand will cause Wynn Resorts numbers to soar when all is said and done with the virus.

He understands this like everyone else dealing with the results of the virus; a mountain of restrictions and a travel and convention industry that has gone bust.

“Life won’t always be this way,” he repeats over and over.

In many comments made to industry leaders and Wall Street reporters and to casino analysts, Maddox remains firm in the belief that when the worst has passed, “Watch out!”

Maddox knows of what he speaks.

Wynn Resorts stock price is an indication that many investors believe in gaming and in folks like Maddox.