MA Casino Developments

Yeah except the ugly buildings in boston are mixed into the skyline. This just glares out and will be visible from afar in all directions. I think it's as anti-Boston as you could possibly get. So is the whole casino idea.



It probably will eventually happen, but I wouldnt crow about anything yet. There's a lot of local opposition and Everett isnt much of a power wielder. That opposition is going to mount a vigorous fight. Personally, I see this as a cause like fighting the Southwest Expressway through Jamaica Plain. It's anathema to a city that prides itself on modesty and liberal values. Casinos belong in trashy states. Not here.

FK --- You're starting to sound like Riff -- put down the medicinal bong and back away from the desktop :)

" It's anathema to a city that prides itself on modesty and liberal values. Casinos belong in trashy states"

Massachusetts: Speaker of the House; President of the Senate; numerous reps and state senators; Boston City Councilor; Probation Board, etc. -- all either currently in the can, pled guilty & turned to be a witness for the Fed prosecutor; or served time and are out

The days of Puritan morals and the state where we are to be "as a city upon a hill" -- those are in the history books
https://thehistoricpresent.wordpress.com/2010/06/28/the-city-upon-a-hill-and-puritan-hubris/
The “City upon a Hill” section of the sermon called “A Model of Christian Charity” was written in 1630 by the Puritan leader John Winthrop while the first group of Puritan emigrants was still onboard their ship, the Arbella, waiting to disembark and create their first settlement in what would become New England.

The casinos are here -- the people had their chance -- now let's get back to worrying about something else that's irrelevant to everyone's life like
The New York Times
Feb 7, 2014
winter and skiing will no longer exist as we know them by....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-snow.html?_r=0
 
I'd say you're letting your distaste for gambling (which I share and voted) color your view of the bronze tower.

The tower *is* Wynn cast in bronze, right down to the fake tan, so its not surprising that if you find casinos anathema, you find the tower anathema. If you don't like religion, there's an analogous reason, I suppose, to not like the Mormon Temple on Route 2.

Personally, though, I prioritize that buildings be true to their function, not to my ethics. In this, I'd say both buildings (the Temple and the Casino) are clean, honest presentations of their purpose within.

"Bronze" and "Monolith" are two good words for both casinos and Steve Wynn.

Really two separate things. I think gambling is stupid and preys on stupid, poor people. And I think that bronze tower is disgusting. It looks like something from Dubai. And it's not within the city, but way off all by itself. It doesn't fit in with anything around it, at all. It's a trashy, glitzy building, emblematic of a trashy, glitzy man and a trashy, glitzy business.

And whighlander, forget the corrupt politics, im well aware of them and abhor them. You see that theyre gonna lift the term limit for fat DeLeo? Boston isnt morally pure, but like the rest of New England it has kept itself relatively protected from some of the trashy and not so nice things of the twentieth century. Our suburbs are not as hideous and banal as, say, California. Urbanism lives, still. I think that despite all of the obnoxious patting ourselves on the back for our academics and being the Athens of America, we should and can hold ourselves to a higher standard. The people didn't have their say in this at all: this campaign was vastly outfunded by the casino industry. And the politicians - the corrupt motherfuckers that you rail against - all got a piece. It's really the nastiest part of Deval's legacy - he was a bit of a flimsy governor, but at least he fought back against the hill now and again. Im sure well never know what back room deals he made to agree to sign this one.

At any rate, this is an architecture forum first and foremost and I think it's a grotesquely ugly building - largely due to the location. I wouldn't mind it quite as much (though I would still say it's tawdry and belongs in a tawdry city like Vegas or Dubai) if it were being built in Back Bay or the Seaport.
 
And I think that bronze tower is disgusting. It looks like something from Dubai.

It looks like NOTHING that they'd build in Dubai. However much people like to dump on Dubai, they do things that are much flashier (and often interesting).
 
It looks like NOTHING that they'd build in Dubai. However much people like to dump on Dubai, they do things that are much flashier (and often interesting).

Yeah, not Dubai at all. It looks like Vegas. Which is the idea.
 
Really two separate things. I think gambling is stupid and preys on stupid, poor people. And I think that bronze tower is disgusting. It looks like something from Dubai. And it's not within the city, but way off all by itself. It doesn't fit in with anything around it, at all. It's a trashy, glitzy building, emblematic of a trashy, glitzy man and a trashy, glitzy business.

And whighlander, forget the corrupt politics, im well aware of them and abhor them. You see that theyre gonna lift the term limit for fat DeLeo? Boston isnt morally pure, but like the rest of New England it has kept itself relatively protected from some of the trashy and not so nice things of the twentieth century. Our suburbs are not as hideous and banal as, say, California. Urbanism lives, still. I think that despite all of the obnoxious patting ourselves on the back for our academics and being the Athens of America, we should and can hold ourselves to a higher standard. The people didn't have their say in this at all: this campaign was vastly outfunded by the casino industry.....

At any rate, this is an architecture forum first and foremost and I think it's a grotesquely ugly building - largely due to the location. I wouldn't mind it quite as much (though I would still say it's tawdry and belongs in a tawdry city like Vegas or Dubai) if it were being built in Back Bay or the Seaport.

Fk -- Some good points:

First this being an Architectural Forum -- the reason we don't have suburb " hideous and banal as, say, California] has a lot to do with why we call ourselves the "Athens of America" and the "Hub", etc.

Winthrop's cronies in addition to being sincerely religious -- were some of the best educated, cultured and entrepreneurial although not rich folks, to found colonies in the New World

As a result :
  • 1) and since they were a corporate body acting for themselves -- they didn't have to deal with fat-cats with large land grants -- everyone essentially could be a homesteader / farmer striking out to plant their own land -- which they promptly decided to do
  • 2) believing in a theocracy and an educated populace they immediately established public schools and founded a college to train ministers and schoolmasters
  • 3) as soon as a group of farmers had enough neighbors to hire a minister and a schoolmaster -- they could petition to the Great and General Court [i.e. the Legislature] to become a town -- thereby governing themselves -- which they promptly did as soon as they could

Thus within a few decades Eastern Massachusetts was divided into independent towns -- some of which later grew into cities -- interconnected with roads

For example the Town of Lexington was first settled by people from Cambridge circa 1642 but remained a part of Cambridge until it was incorporated as a parish, called Cambridge Farms, in 1691 with its own church and minister and itinerant school master. However it was too small to be totally independent until 1713 when it was incorporated as a separate town.

Lexington was connected to the centers of other like towns settled in the same period by paths that later became major streets:
  • center to center reciprocally named:
    • Woburn [1640],
    • Waltham [1634],
    • Bedford [1640],
  • other important roads connected Lexington:
    • Mass Ave in Lexington to Concord [1634 settled and incorporated] via Lincoln [1650]
    • Mass Ave to Cambridge and ultimately Boston via Arlington [1635 part of Cambridge until 1807] -- the route Revere took in 1775
    • Watertown [1630 -- same year settled and incorporated as Boston] via Belmont [1636 though not incorporated as an independent town until 1859]

In any rate with 50 years of the settlement on Boston Harbor -- you had to go a surprising way out [Littleton @ I-495 & Rt-2 in 1686] to find any land that wasn't settled and on the way to being incorporated

While there were trades, spin-outs and acquisitions between the towns as late as the early 20th C -- most of the map as we know it was established by the time of the Civil War

Railroads, trolley lines and highways just followed the Colonial era routes and insured Greater Boston's uniquely New England metropolitan structure which in turn in the 20th C led to the MDC, MBTA, etc.
 
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Fk -- Some good points:

Winthrop's cronies in addition to being sincerely religious -- were some of the best educated, cultured and entrepreneurial although not rich folks, to found colonies in the New World

As a result :
  • 1) and since they were a corporate body acting for themselves -- they didn't have to deal with fat-cats with large land grants -- everyone essentially could be a homesteader / farmer striking out to plant their own land -- which they promptly decided to do
  • 2) believing in a theocracy and an educated populace they immediately established public schools and founded a college to train ministers and schoolmasters
  • 3) as soon as a group of farmers had enough neighbors to hire a minister and a schoolmaster -- they could petition to the Great and General Court [i.e. the Legislature] to become a town -- thereby governing themselves -- which they promptly did as soon as they could

Thus within a few decades Eastern Massachusetts was divided into independent towns -- some of which later grew into cities -- interconnected with roads

For example the Town of Lexington was first settled by people from Cambridge circa 1642 but remained a part of Cambridge until it was incorporated as a parish, called Cambridge Farms, in 1691 with its own church and minister and itinerant school master. However it was too small to be totally independent until 1713 when it was incorporated as a separate town.

Lexington was connected to the centers of other like towns settled in the same period by paths that later became major streets:
  • center to center reciprocally named:
    • Woburn [1640],
    • Waltham [1634],
    • Bedford [1640],
  • other important roads connected Lexington:
    • Mass Ave in Lexington to Concord [1634 settled and incorporated] via Lincoln [1650]
    • Mass Ave to Cambridge and ultimately Boston via Arlington [1635 part of Cambridge until 1807] -- the route Revere took in 1775
    • Watertown [1630 -- same year settled and incorporated as Boston] via Belmont [1636 though not incorporated as an independent town until 1859]

In any rate with 50 years of the settlement on Boston Harbor -- you had to go a surprising way out [Littleton @ I-495 & Rt-2 in 1686] to find any land that wasn't settled and on the way to being incorporated

While there were trades, spin-outs and acquisitions between the towns as late as the early 20th C -- most of the map as we know it was established by the time of the Civil War

Railroads, trolley lines and highways just followed the Colonial era routes and insured Greater Boston's uniquely New England metropolitan structure which in turn in the 20th C led to the MDC, MBTA, etc.

Yes - and more tangentially, why our state has the delightful, English pattern of still (at least in older cases) differentiating streets - a smaller way, within a city or town - from roads, which are greater ways that connect two different places and are named for the destination, in England, still, with the prefixed article "the" as in, "the needham road", "the bedford road" etc. I bet you could go back 50 years and people around her still called them with the added prefix "the".

But although I support the pragmatics of the Puritans, theirs was very mercantile pragmatism and let us not forget that despite their religious zeal and dedication to a form of democratic and municipal way of life that gave way to ours, the Puritans were out to make money in the Mass. Bay on a royal charter. And I must point out that they were already, in fact, rich - Winthrop and Saltonstall in particular were well established wealthy families back home. This is in contrast to the Pilgrims of Plymouth who were mid-middle class at best, certainly not landed gentry, and who only wanted religious freedom without the mercantile attitude of their northern neighbors, the Puritans. People confuse the two and forget that the true Brahmins were all of Puritan stock, and generally did come to America with plenty of money in their pockets already. This doesn't detract from what they accomplished over here, but it's a reality that mustn't be ignored.
 
Casinos belong in trashy states. Not here.

For the record, here are some states that currently have or have legalized casino gambling, Indian-style and/or non-Indian, per Wikipedia:

Alabama Alaska Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississipi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Texas Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

76% (38 out of 50) states now have, or have legalized, casino gambling. Those states include 88% (271 out of 309 million) of the country's population.

I'm really, really trying to envision a more spectacularly out-of-touch comment than "casinos belong in trashy states." Really, I'm trying...
 
For the record, here are some states that currently have or have legalized casino gambling, Indian-style and/or non-Indian, per Wikipedia:

Alabama Alaska Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississipi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Texas Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

76% (38 out of 50) states now have, or have legalized, casino gambling. Those states include 88% (271 out of 309 million) of the country's population.

I'm really, really trying to envision a more spectacularly out-of-touch comment than "casinos belong in trashy states." Really, I'm trying...

Keep trying. 62,040,610 Americans voted for George Bush the second time around, and a third of this country doesn't believe in evolution. So "88%" doesn't mean a whole lot to me - and, that list is deceptive. Indian vs non-Indian is a big difference, since the fed decides that, not the state.
 
76% (38 out of 50) states now have, or have legalized, casino gambling. Those states include 88% (271 out of 309 million) of the country's population.

I'm really, really trying to envision a more spectacularly out-of-touch comment than "casinos belong in trashy states." Really, I'm trying...

But how many of those states allow you to gamble when you are on land? I'm only half joking about that.
 
But how many of those states allow you to gamble when you are on land? I'm only half joking about that.

Oh, dear, you're not trying to define "land" now, are you?

I'm pretty sure at least one state legislature in the Ohio/Mississippi valley permitted "riverboat casinos" to be built and to operate when the "river" in question constitutes a moat of water situated beneath the fixed, land-based casino tower.

Of course, that was probably in one of the trashier states... he he he.
 
I went to college in southwestern Ohio. Indiana had riverboat casinos. They were sort of cool, depending on your definition of cool. You could drink 24/7, which fit the definition of us college kids.
 
But how many of those states allow you to gamble when you are on land? I'm only half joking about that.

Fun fact: Illinois only allowed riverboat casinos on the Mississippi and other Downstate rivers for a long time. When they had a similar legislative movement to MA to allow them closer to Chicago, they either set or kept (not sure which) a requirement that every gaming floor must be floating on water.

The Rivers casino near O'Hare Airport actually has a six-inch-deep pool of circulating water under the gaming floor to meat this requirement.
 
Wynn Everett Details its Strategies for Cleanup of Site Contamination

...the site has three major pollution areas of concern.

The first two areas contain arsenic, lead and other heavy metals – common pollutants in Boston’s old industrial waterfront sites. The first of those sites is in the central area on the waterfront just north of the giant windmill. The second such site is far to the back of the site adjacent to the MBTA Maintenance Yard.

Those two sites will be subject to complete excavation of soils that will be removed by truck and replaced with new soils.

“All this really highly contaminated soils are going to be shipped in closed containers like a giant Ziploc bag or a sealed truck,” Fay said. “Three are not going to be open trucks or dump trucks like you might see on the streets. We’ll also have a washing station for the wheels of all the trucks to go through before leaving the site so that contaminated soils don’t get spread to city streets.”

He said that dust particles in the air will be monitored as well as air quality.

All materials, he said, would be shipped to licensed disposal sites – as is standard clean up procedure.

The third site will be a little different, as it is contaminated from the years of making sulfuric acid. It is located right on the waterfront area and is responsible for the orange seepage that is easily seen coming out of the ground and into the Mystic River.

“That site has a low Ph. and so it is acidic,” Fay said. “One activity that took place there was the manufacture of sulfuric acid and there are remnants of that still in the soil.”

To remediate that area, Fay said they would use a technique called In-Situ Solidification/Stabilization.

That process entails, he said, using dry cement to mix with the contaminated soils to neutralize the acidic content. With cement being more of a base with a high Ph., the mixture with the low Ph. soil is expected to neutralize it.

Other areas for excavation of soil will include the footprint of the underground parking garage in the central part of the site.

Finally, Fay said there would be the placement of uncontaminated soil caps on any areas not covered by buildings or pavement.

http://www.everettindependent.com/2...strategies-for-cleanup-of-site-contamination/
 
^^ Thanks for sharing that. My biggest takeaway from that article is that the site will feature underground parking. I've been to at least 40 casinos around the country and have to say this is the first time I've heard of one having an underground garage component (i.e. not surface lots and not above ground structures). That is big news for this project.
 
^^ Thanks for sharing that. My biggest takeaway from that article is that the site will feature underground parking. I've been to at least 40 casinos around the country and have to say this is the first time I've heard of one having an underground garage component (i.e. not surface lots and not above ground structures). That is big news for this project.

The Palazzo in Vegas has 5 levels of parking below the whole podium. It was the biggest excavation in the country at that time anyways. Many many trucks a day of dirt leaving there.

There is also 5-6 levels under the Marina Bay Sand's, but portions of that is underground mall space, and trains. But, there are 5 -6 levels under portions of that devoted to parking as well under the Casino, Under the MICE, and under the theaters.
 
^^ Thanks for sharing that. My biggest takeaway from that article is that the site will feature underground parking. I've been to at least 40 casinos around the country and have to say this is the first time I've heard of one having an underground garage component (i.e. not surface lots and not above ground structures). That is big news for this project.

Foxwoods has one of their garages underground.
 
Wynn Plans to Develop Employee Parking Near Produce Center

Plans for an off-site employee parking lot with hundreds of spaces to handle a large percentage of the Wynn Everett workforce were unveiled in a state environmental filing last week, and the parking lot is tentatively sited somewhere in Produce Center on the Everett/Chelsea line.

The news came deep within Wynn’s recent filing last week of its supplemental environmental reports on traffic and parking with state environmental regulators. While a majority of the plan concentrates on traffic mitigation in Charlestown’s Sullivan Square area, one piece of the overall plan is to locate employee parking off-site.

According to the plan in the filing, some 800 spaces would be contracted off-site by Wynn, though not all of them would be located in area near the Produce Center.

“While no specific parking site has been identified for the Everett employee parking lot, the plan is to locate it in the industrial southeast quadrant of Everett, generally south of Revere Beach Parkway (Route 16) and east of Broadway (Route 99),” read the filing. “The predicted modes of Project employee travel on Fridays and Saturdays by percentage and person trips, as shown, are 41%, of employees are expected to drive and park at the employee off-site parking facilities and 20% of employees are expected to travel to the Project via the Orange Line. Another 20% of employees will use the neighborhood shuttle, and the remaining 19% will use the other travel modes…The Proponent plans to lease up to 800 spaces at three off-site parking facilities to accommodate employee parking and has confirmed with the operators that sufficient capacity is available at the potential lease locations to accommodate the number of spaces referenced.”

Wynn would also run 24-hour shuttle buses from the off-site parking facility to its casino at Everett’s Lower Broadway area, which is only minutes from the proposed lot location on the Everett/Chelsea line.

“Employees using single-occupancy vehicles to travel to work will be required to park at designated off-site locations and ride a shuttle bus to the Project Site. The employee shuttle buses will be operated by the Proponent (or contracted through a third party vendor) and will be a free service for employees of the Project validated by their security badges,” read the filing. “Three separate employee shuttle bus routes will operate between the Project’s employee entrance and off-site employee parking facilities in Medford adjacent to Wellington Station, Malden at a downtown garage, and potentially in Everett at a location to be determined.”

http://www.chelsearecord.com/2015/02/26/wynn-plans-to-develop-employee-parking-near-produce-center/
 
Typical Massachusetts. No actual environmental standards worth a damn, but lots of red tape.
 
Typical Massachusetts. No actual environmental standards worth a damn, but lots of red tape.

A casino in Everett or Revere is going to create a traffic Gridlock scenario without a proper plan-- the MBTA is a mess right now do you really believe a casino in these two locations will make a better transit into the city?

They really need to rethink the entire transit situation before this casino actually gets built
 
^ I hope you just copy-paste that by now. This must be the 84th time you've made that exact same post.
 

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