Encore Boston Harbor Casino | 1 Broadway | Everett

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

How long before Wynn offers the T a replacement bus garage, in exchange for their current property?

Never. There's no other gigantic slab of land to put that facility, which handles all the heavy repairs for the whole bus system as well as a shitload of component repair chores for the rapid transit dept. Wellington parking lot has already been earmarked for 12 years now with an unfunded rec to trade the commuter parking into a vertical garage so the T can claim all that asphalt acreage for an expansion bus garage (e.g. ability for the Charlestown garage routes to get 60-footers at long last). The only equivalent-size land is already spoken for.

The heavy-repair facility has to be in central enough driving range to the other big bus garages--Charlestown, Albany, Cabot, Southampton--for a quick trip up I-93 for towing a disabled or wrecked bus, and within I-93 or US 1 range for relatively efficient equipment moves to the outermost garages in Quincy and Lynn. Unless Wynn's godfather offer has a Goldilocks solve for the required location and acreage of the replacement facility...the Everett Shops land grab can't happen at any price without badly hurting systemwide Yellow and Silver Line ops. It literally has to be there within 1 exit of the Leverett Connector or on some mythical parcel around South Bay interchange that has equivalent acreage.

Where else central enough driving distance to all the downtown-serving bus garages can they relocate the repair facility? No Wynn godfather offer in the world can buy that claim that property without solving the need for a land swap of equal acreage equal convenience

 

[The EGE]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

(F-Line beat me too much of this...)

Everett Shops is vastly harder to move than your normal bus garage. It's got a huge parts inventory, the largest machine shop equipment, and so on; you can't just plop it anywhere than you can put a prefab metal shed with some offices and a few lifts. It's the heavy backshop for the entire MBTA system; the other shops send vehicles or parts to them for the biggest repairs. That includes the rail lines as well - work like collision rebuilds and wheel truing that Cabot, Wellington, and so on aren't fully equipped for.

Between the need for about 20 acres of land relatively near downtown as F-Line said, the near-impossibility of convincing any community to accept a heavy backshop being built, environmental remediation of the existing site, and the cost of building the massive backshop, you're probably talking in the $200-400 million range. Other than that one telecom exchange near DTX, Everett Shops might be the single most expensive non-high-rise parcel in the area to relocate.

Everett Shops is never going to be a commercial threat to Wynn; it's not like anyone else has the kind of money to pay to move it. If Wynn every needs significant acreage for expansion, it'd be vastly cheaper to buy out sections of Gateway Center. Costco and Target would be much easier - they just need a prefab building and some structured parking.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Leading me to a critical question... How am I going to get to Santilli Highway from rt 16 east in that proposed configuration?

The same exact way you would today?

 

[RandomWalk]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Interesting to read about the logistical implications of moving the Everett shops for the T. I suppose the tank farm of Beacham will never go away, since that has enough area to accommodate the shops with room to spare.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Interesting to read about the logistical implications of moving the Everett shops for the T. I suppose the tank farm of Beacham will never go away, since that has enough area to accommodate the shops with room to spare.

Randomwalk -- Talk about Logistics issues -- Where are you going to find land near the piers where you could relocate the tanks? And then there's the minor matter of decades of potential contamination which would have to be cleaned-up

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Interesting to read about the logistical implications of moving the Everett shops for the T. I suppose the tank farm of Beacham will never go away, since that has enough area to accommodate the shops with room to spare.

Nobody is getting rid of the tanks, or getting rid of Everett Terminal. That is all mission-critical fuel distribution infrastructure for the whole region and a major deepwater port area. You can't have a functional metropolis with absolute 0.00% land zoning for industrial or distribution, and absolute 0.00% land zoning for infrastructure support facilities in spitting distance of the CBD. FFS...you can't even do that in SimCity without starving your own canvas full of pretty and/or tall things to death!

There is no wormhole in Downtown Boston to shove all the not-pretty essential things so all land can be topped with the most aesthetically pleasing creations of one's imagination, nor an infinite money pot to make it happen. Wynn gets less interested, not more, in alternate-universe Everett where those parcels are all available but additional bus frequencies are not because the T has to tow stuff out to Billerica to repair it due to all its local land disappearing from under its feet. And he'll want to put down less of his own money--not more--with more public handouts--not less--if the diesel fuel for the construction vehicles for this resort costs an arm and a leg because Boston banished all its barge-fillable gas tanks to Saint John, Newfoundland. Just like we'd be paying through the nose for restaurant food and inadvertently hurting BCEC patronage if Boston 2024 booted all the food distro warehouses away from easy transport distance.

Virtually all "ugly" stuff that truly was expendable to the 'burbs left Boston decades ago for I-495 or out-of-region altogether. Virtually all that is left is the bare essentials that have to be precisely where they are in close range of the CBD to do their jobs. Shipping/distribution of goods, fuel/energy distribution, bulk aggregates (cement, crushed stone, salt, etc.) loading sites, perishables and cold storage, waste disposal, and all manner of infrastructure to maintain other infrastructure (transit, utilities, DPW, etc.). That stuff is basically the motor oil that lubricates the economy, and things start stalling if aesthetic short-sightedness kicks these facilities far enough outside the gates of the CBD that they can no longer do their jobs in service of the CBD. And economic growth starts stagnating as it becomes too much more expensive to get construction materials, fuel for those construction cranes and vehicles, wholesale food for all those BCEC and casino patrons flooding the restaurants around town, and so on. NYC has been erecting pretty things at an even more breakneck pace than us, but they've also been investing big in these "must be there" ugly sites over the last 20+ years because growth can't be fed without distribution. Hunts Point food warehouses, port expansion out the wazoo, garbage processing facilities, bigger transit yards (even the ones that are getting air rights cover-overs). It's a fact of life. Cities don't function solely as a collection of tall pretty things in a trophy case. So that mundane shit that makes them run has to live around it, even when it's proximity-dependent and has to occupy prime real estate.

Want sustainable growth? Learn to accept the uglier land use as that which enables the prettier land use.

 

[tangent]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

The same exact way you would today?

It looks to me from that graphic that they were looking to eliminate the right turn lane on rt 16 east onto the inner loop of the rotary.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Doesn't look that way to me. Looks like they're just changing the geometry. In fact, it looks like the turn will be even higher speed than at present.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

(F-Line beat me too much of this...)

Everett Shops is vastly harder to move than your normal bus garage. It's got a huge parts inventory, the largest machine shop equipment, and so on; you can't just plop it anywhere than you can put a prefab metal shed with some offices and a few lifts. It's the heavy backshop for the entire MBTA system; the other shops send vehicles or parts to them for the biggest repairs. That includes the rail lines as well - work like collision rebuilds and wheel truing that Cabot, Wellington, and so on aren't fully equipped for.

Between the need for about 20 acres of land relatively near downtown as F-Line said, the near-impossibility of convincing any community to accept a heavy backshop being built, environmental remediation of the existing site, and the cost of building the massive backshop, you're probably talking in the $200-400 million range. Other than that one telecom exchange near DTX, Everett Shops might be the single most expensive non-high-rise parcel in the area to relocate.

Everett Shops is never going to be a commercial threat to Wynn; it's not like anyone else has the kind of money to pay to move it. If Wynn every needs significant acreage for expansion, it'd be vastly cheaper to buy out sections of Gateway Center. Costco and Target would be much easier - they just need a prefab building and some structured parking.

And yet, Wynn has 22 acres between Air Force Drive and the Malden River, about a half mile north of the current shops...so Wynn does own a parcel that happens to be in the right size and location, and the parcel's stated purpose is as a destination for relocating his neighbors.

And Wynn would not flinch at any remediation that the T site would need.

In that $250m to $400m price to move, how much would be site acquisition? How much in operating costs could the T save by getting a more modern building purpose built for modern practices?

I'm not saying the T should move or that Wynn would offer them enough to do so, but he's clearly got the toolkit and incentive needed to make an offer to the T for the Everett shops.

 

[RandomWalk]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

F Line, I wasn't proposing the tank farm as a practical solution. I accept that the shops aren't going anywhere. I am mostly amused that Wynn selected the industrial zone for his playpen.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

And yet, Wynn has 22 acres between Air Force Drive and the Malden River, about a half mile north of the current shops...so Wynn does own a parcel that happens to be in the right size and location, and the parcel's stated purpose is as a destination for relocating his neighbors.

And Wynn would not flinch at any remediation that the T site would need.

In that $250m to $400m price to move, how much would be site acquisition? How much in operating costs could the T save by getting a more modern building purpose built for modern practices?

I'm not saying the T should move or that Wynn would offer them enough to do so, but he's clearly got the toolkit and incentive needed to make an offer to the T for the Everett shops.

Why are you blindly assuming that just because Wynn is loaded he's willing to spend his money stupidly??? Re-read EGE's post; that is one of the most goddamn expensive T facilities of all to relocate. The type of work done there requires industrial zoning, extremely expensive industrial facilities and industrial equipment built to bleeding-edge code--not grandfathered like the current shops--, an outright expansion of the 110,000 sq. feet currently available for future-proofing, and site remediation when they're gone almost as nasty as the ex-Monsato cleanup with all the petroleum product and heavy metal seep that have piled up onsite through 100 years of newer-gen shop facilities being plopped right on top of far dirtier old shop facilities.

It is stupid money. Why would Wynn spend a quarter-billion dollars of his own volition just to remove the current tenant before spending another 9 figures more to build something? Is there any argument whatsoever that makes sense for the profit-and-loss of HIS globally-distributed portfolio? He is not all-eggs-in-one-basket with Boston such that every pitch has to be met with a 5-run home run swing. Everett's tippy-top revenue targets are dwarfed by many of his other resorts...other resorts whose margins he did not cultivate by doling out obscene quarter-bil checks just to acquire the land before first shovel. This is naive pie-in-sky fantasy in some vacuum world where bang-for-buck doesn't matter and skilled businessmen abandon a full career of the scruples that made them shrewd and successful for a one-time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ splurge. In one of the tertiary resort markets in his vast portfolio. Please explain the logic of how Wynn will justify this to his own self. It's not how he has ever rolled, and it's not how he will actually go about acquiring additional land around the casino.

There is zero chance the Shops are moving up the street, and it is zero because it's a pants-on-head stupid way to spend money for a guy who has virtually never spent his money stupidly.

 

[Arlington]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

The answer is "option value"...given only one casino license, he is smart to have long term site options if it does unexpectedly well. Indeed, his purchase of the GE parcel is 100% option (40 acres / 22 acres buildable having no immediate use) as far as we know.

Costco is another option, but he does not yet control it.

That the option is not currently "in the money" doesn't mean he hasn't considered it part of the value of buying the GE property.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

The answer is "option value"...given only one casino license, he is smart to have long term site options if it does unexpectedly well. Indeed, his purchase of the GE parcel is 100% option (40 acres / 22 acres buildable having no immediate use) as far as we know.

Costco is another option, but he does not yet control it.

That the option is not currently "in the money" doesn't mean he hasn't considered it part of the value of buying the GE property.

No, it's "stupid money" for a "tertiary Wynn development" cloaked in buzzwordy feel-goodness. This entire fantasy is predicated on a ruthlessly profit-driven businessman going against the grain on 4 decades of his own methodical business practices. You realize that $300M+ in sunk cost--FIVE times what he paid to acquire and remediate the Monsato property--just to secure the land the Shops sit on before spending one solitary cent erecting anything on top of it would make Wynn Everett his most expensive development on earth by a large margin? Costlier than Wynn Las Vegas, his largest. In one of the smallest resort markets (not census markets...resort markets) Wynn plays in.

Yes, that is a very naive personal leap of faith that runs contrary to how Wynn has operated in his four-decade business career. He has always sought buy-low real estate and then socked his money into blowing people away on the amenities.

• His first move 45 years ago was parlaying the profits from some barren land he sold to Caesar's Palace into a fixer-upper reno of one of Vegas's oldest downtown casinos and working the location to his advantage. Then selling that when it went gangbusters during Vegas' first mega- growth spurt.
• He pounced early on Atlantic City real estate after gambling was legalized and built the "locals-only" Golden Nugget--one of the smallest in town--for cheap at the arse end of the Boardwalk. Then sold it for a half-billion in (1980's $$$) profit when AC's real estate bubble was at its most inflated.
• He built the Mirage, generally considered his finest overall work, when Vegas was in a prolonged late-80's recession and most stagnant overall economy since it went boomtown.
• He built Treasure Island on Mirage's vast parking lot on-the-cheap by packing all the parking capacity vertical to clear the land and shotgunning it with a Mirage reconfiguration.
• He built the Bellagio on the land of the now-demolished Dunes casino he bought lock, stock out of bankruptcy liquidation for $75M.
• He bought cheap land to build the Beau Rivage in Biloxi when Mississippi was a brand new expansion market satellite to New Orleans. After it was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina he rebuilt it below-cost at a time when low bids were easy gets in a wrecked local economy and now sits on a property valuation of $2B should he decide to sell.

What evidence is there that he's suddenly going to go against the grain on a lifetime of buy-low property acquisition...especially in an immature expansion market? Wynn has never ever acquired property with tactical nuclear strikes...ever. No, the fact that 'a' slab of land exists a mile up the road does not suggest at all that he's going to dole out the largest pure land acquisition payout he has ever made in his life. There is absolutely no factual evidence backing up the financial scruples of such a move...just a lot of naive wishful thinking and eye-of-beholder armchair preferences of site plan conceptual integrity not anchored in any real-business reality.


He's piling up land across the street. And he can sit and wait and prove himself a good neighbor until City of Medford is willing to play ball with him on a Costco property acquisition, and get exactly the same acreage for a few dozen $M. And use the ex-GE property to parlay relocation of any of those properties. There is no freaking way when those options are available that he's going to write a stupid-size check for the Shops land. You're going to have to back up that claim with teeth against the burden-of-proof in his real business history...not one's own wishful thinking projected onto 'possibles' in a vacuum.

 

[whighlander]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Nobody is getting rid of the tanks, or getting rid of Everett Terminal. That is all mission-critical fuel distribution infrastructure for the whole region and a major deepwater port area. You can't have a functional metropolis with absolute 0.00% land zoning for industrial or distribution, and absolute 0.00% land zoning for infrastructure support facilities in spitting distance of the CBD. FFS...you can't even do that in SimCity without starving your own canvas full of pretty and/or tall things to death!


Want sustainable growth? Learn to accept the uglier land use as that which enables the prettier land use.

F-Line -- I was Yaaying along with you on this and was working up toward a Hozanna ..... when in a subsequent post you popped in [sort of Riff style]

This is naive pie-in-sky fantasy in some vacuum world where bang-for-buck doesn't matter and skilled businessmen abandon a full career of the scruples that made them shrewd and successful for a one-time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ splurge. In one of the tertiary resort markets in his vast portfolio.

and you wouldn't stop [also kinda Riff-like]

No, it's "stupid money" for a "tertiary Wynn development" cloaked in buzzwordy feel-goodness. This entire fantasy is predicated on a ruthlessly profit-driven businessman going against the grain on 4 decades of his own methodical business practices

Wynn has stated that the Wynn Boston Harbor [hotel not the casino] will feature 5* rooms -- some of if not the largest hotel rooms in the US outside of Vegas [baby]

There is nothing Tertiary or even Secondary about this -- its a first marker of what Wynn sees as a major investment [not that the current 2.1 $B is anything tertiary to begin with]

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

F-Line -- I was Yaaying along with you on this and was working up toward a Hozanna ..... when in a subsequent post you popped in [sort of Riff style]


and you wouldn't stop [also kinda Riff-like]



Wynn has stated that the Wynn Boston Harbor [hotel not the casino] will feature 5* rooms -- some of if not the largest hotel rooms in the US outside of Vegas [baby]

There is nothing Tertiary or even Secondary about this -- its a first marker of what Wynn sees as a major investment [not that the current 2.1 $B is anything tertiary to begin with]

No, it is a by objective math smaller/tertiary resort market that happens to reside in a very large and lucrative census market. But census market does not lead gaming market by the nose. New England is just not a very big gaming/resort audience compared to Vegas, the Gulf Coast, or what Atlantic City was pre-collapse. It's maxed out for gaming given that the MA and CT Gaming Commissions can't give away licenses and all other going-concern proposals have been significantly downsized as middling demand exerts itself. Where Wynn's hotel space is going to get the biggest % utilization is not from his own resort-goers, but from a general-purpose business traveler, convention-goer, and writ-large Boston tourist patronage.

There is absolutely a need for more luxury hotel space, and he will absolutely make a killing there with said luxury hotel space because he can do luxury accommodations hands-down better than anyone else on the planet. But it is not at all not the same kind of onsite vertical integration with the gaming/fun-n'-games resort as you would get in a primary gambling market, or with a casino campus like Foxwoods or Mohegan. The main upside for him with that room capacity is general-purpose luxury hotel demand for Boston. That makes Wynn much, much less dependent on a wholly-integrated campus where everything has to be connected on the same site to the same buildings. He can easily work the across-street blocks he's buying up on the Broadway-Everett Terminal buffer or the Costco parcels for that kind of expansion at no detriment to his overall Everett plan because most of the hotel audience is not going to need the complete and seamless vertical integration with the resort.

Bottom line is wholly consistent with his business M.O.: buy low with undervalued property, then knock everyone's socks off with the build. It doesn't change the calculus with the adjacent Shops parcel. That's utterly stupid money he doesn't need to spend when he has other options. And a tertiary gambling market in a primary city does not need complete-and-total vertical integration with the resort on the same connected slab of land when the complementary development draws a more general-purpose audience than the typical resort. He's playing to the economics of Boston as they are:

• a smallish resort market with a finite saturation level that is nonetheless a gimme for the price if the resort is right-sized to the market.
• a very large census and commerce market with an extremely high growth ceiling for luxury travel accommodations.
• a very heterogeneous demand audience from the juxtaposition of fast-growing modern metropolis with limited-cap 'pure' resort market.

It's smart business of the exact kind Wynn has made a career-long name for: always parlaying his initial investments bottom-up, not top-down...and correctly pegging the demand ceiling on the eve of when it goes gangbusters, but with impeccable timing to build right before it goes gangbusters and jacks his build costs.


Tactical nuclear striking for the Shops parcel with a colossal over-pay is completely inconsistent with how he has done business since 1970, and does not fit the demand profile he's pouncing on. Demand which he is making a (correct) hedge that tight vertical integration with the resort the likes of which is standard-issue for primary gambling markets...is unnecessary in a tertiary gambling market with heterogeneous audience.




None of that calls into question the grand slam he's about to hit. But this notion that the Shops land is some sort of manifest destiny for him is not ground in empirical reality. Personal opinions that it is so need to be backed up here, because there's zero smoke behind it with his business M.O. and other range of options better befitting his career-long business M.O. The fact that he owns a slab of land in Malden is not evidence that This Shall Eventually Be So. People's personal beliefs on that subject need to be very, very toothily backed with hard business evidence because some bland assumption of faith not only has no smoke behind it but openly contradict Wynn's whole 45-year body of work. Pointing out those contradictions isn't the counterpoint of the argument that needs the most proof; the faith that it will happen is the counterpoint needing hard justification.



And thanks for the Riff dig. Your Ripkenian consecutive ad hominem streak in replies remains fully intact as a league record.

 

[odurandina]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

How many cranes?? Geebus. Just wondering; Is this Grand Slam Casino complex the reason half the projects in Boston haven't started??

 

[tangent]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Doesn't look that way to me. Looks like they're just changing the geometry. In fact, it looks like the turn will be even higher speed than at present.

Not sure how you are reading that graphic... I see the purple lines as the outline of the previous configuration. Looking at the current layout it appears that the right turn lane from 16E onto the rotary would be replaced with a merge onto the rotary from what is currently a dedicated ramp that goes into the shopping plaza

Personally I would think that instead of a flyover from 16E to frontage road you would flyover all of rt 16 as a bridge/overpass and have the rotary underneath so completely eliminate the need for lights.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Not sure how you are reading that graphic... I see the purple lines as the outline of the previous configuration. Looking at the current layout it appears that the right turn lane from 16E onto the rotary would be replaced with a merge onto the rotary from what is currently a dedicated ramp that goes into the shopping plaza

Personally I would think that instead of a flyover from 16E to frontage road you would flyover all of rt 16 as a bridge/overpass and have the rotary underneath so completely eliminate the need for lights.

Flyover's badly needed here. But the effed up part of the traffic patterns on the 28-to-99 segment is the 99 rotary, not this one. That distended north frontage road from 99 is not getting any modification whatsoever, so that whole clusterfuck to the east will now be carrying all manner of traffic for new casino, new Broadway redev, and increasing amounts of the existing primary truck traffic from the Terminal as it grows. It'll continue to be a festering sore, and the sharp wrap around the rotary for exiting 16EB traffic making the way to that frontage and 99 is going to leave ground-level traffic a continued mess even if the mainline gets sped up. And be a constant truck tip-over hazard (which it already is) as the Terminal gets busier.

They really a more comprehensive solution that tackles both rotaries. Re-centering the 99 structure would probably be beneficial. Not all of the land underneath is wetlands, particularly the 150'x300' wedge between the T ballast pile and the loop ramp.

• Shift the rotary structure a little bit SW straddling the tracks, and widen out the geometry slightly.
• Slightly curve the mainline about 100 ft. north over the ballast pile to center it under the shifted rotary.
• Use the freed-up space and improved geometry to do proper diamond-interchange ramps from all directions of 16 into the rotary, eliminating all feeder use of the frontage and that ultra-tight loop ramp.
• Use the shifted rotary geometry to give the Main St. and 99 feeders from the north more merge breathing room so it isn't such a pile-up of fast-merging traffic.
• Decommission the north frontage in favor of knitting together the disconnected residential street grid. If wetlands permit, leveling the embankment the frontage sits on could serve up land to build a facing row of houses nearly the full length of an upgraded Bizarro Lane + Spalding St. Reconnect Wellington Ave./West St. with a path grade crossing and Wellington/Huntley St. with Santilli Hwy. by re-claiming the Best Buy driveway so this neighborhood can be whole again.

 

[DrFreewind]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

How many cranes?? Geebus. Just wondering; Is this Grand Slam Casino complex the reason half the projects in Boston haven't started??

there were 14 cranes on site a few weeks ago, but trevi icos is packing up their cranes now so they should be available to other projects

 

[eswwaa]

Re: Wynn Everett Casino | Everett

Interesting construction update, they are one month ahead of schedule, slurry walls are nearly done, onto digging out the foundation...

>>The slurry wall foundation that supports a majority of the Wynn Boston Harbor building is nearly completed, more than a month ahead of schedule, and work crews are in the process this week of digging out the parking garage area.
“The slurry walls are nearly done,” said Greg John on Wynn Boston Harbor. “The cranes you saw here in August when we started are now coming down and they’ll be bringing in the steel cranes soon. The big thing that is going on now is digging out the foundation. That will take them through November. The iron cranes will be arriving in December…By the first of the year, you’ll be seeing cranes bringing steel in and the structure going up.”

http://charlestownbridge.com/2016/10/21/wynn-boston-harbor-tears-through-slurry-wall-construction/