After much regulatory spilkes and political infighting, Encore Boston Harbor has come to market and early auguries are good. JP Morgan analyst Joseph Greff got one of the first looks at the property and was “impressed. In short, 
we think it takes a little bit from its prior developments in Las Vegas and Macau and combines the best of these characteristics into what would be not only the best regional, non-Las Vegas casino in the U.S., but a top resort in Las Vegas as well.” He said that if he didn’t know he was in Boston, he would have thought he was in Macao or Vegas. Wynn Resorts, he opined, did a praiseworthy job of making the casino “feel intimate and neighborhoody and complemented it with a beautiful room product.” The gaming floor (split over two levels) deploys 3,158 slots, 143 table games, and 88 poker tables. Mass-market games are on the first, high-limit play and poker on the second. Ceilings appear higher than the norm and “the color schemes are light and natural.”
Roger Thomas, Wynn’s design impresario said of the look, “Our guests find themselves in an environment that makes them feel their best selves. Hopefully, we help you feel funnier, more romantic, even more considerate. When you leave, you realize you’ve had a completely different experience that if you want again, you’ll simply have to return.” As for the Jeff Koons sculpture of Popeye that was shipped from Las Vegas to highlight Encore, “The person looking at them is actually reflected in the art. I think the person looking at the art becomes a piece of the art while they’re involved at the art,” he told Global Gaming Business. “I think that’s a wonderful, very contemporary late 20th century notion.”
In addition to Murano glass chandeliers crowning the casino floor, Encore features an aerial sculpture of 11,000 jewels and 83,000 flowers. As Thomas 
says, “They’re nothing that anyone’s seen at a hotel.” Or as Everett Mayor Carlo DeMario puts it memorably, “Everett will no longer be that place where the scrap yards and the used car lots and the power plant are.” There’s still some question about Encore’s ability to lure whales, whom MGM Springfield has found in short supply. MGM is resorting to luxury limousine rides from Logan International Airport, comped rooms in high-end hotels, sports tickets and even free Boston Symphony Orchestra tickets to lure the rare creatures.
Most of the 15 restaurants are carryovers from Wynncore, including Sinatra and Rare, a renamed version of SW, so as not to invoke He Who Must Not Be Named. “The spa product is another top version of Wynn and Encore Las Vegas, and the outdoor grounds are beautifully appointed to allow easy ingress and egress to the interior of various parts of the resort,” Greff opined. He questioned whether 671 hotel rooms would be enough, allowing that this was a nice problem to have, and said he’d look forward to seeing how traffic issues manifest themselves (or fail to) over time, adding that it took him 14 minutes to get from a Back Bay hotel to Encore. As for Wynn’s upcoming (July 10) investor day, he wrote with exquisite understatement, “We don’t think there will be much of a discussion on asset divestitures.”
Using the mantra “Arrive relaxed,” Wynn is marketing public transportation 
heavily, as well as investing $4 million in a squadron of “motor yachts,” upon which 35 passengers apiece can loll in white-plush splendor while listening to the strains of Frank Sinatra. Having also spent $70 million on road upgrades, Wynn has been an upstanding corporate citizen, one that is supplementing the notorious T with its own bus service (including $14 round trips to New Hampshire).
“They have funded more transportation mitigation than any other private development in the history of Massachusetts,” remarked Metropolitan Area Planning Council Director of Transportation Planning Eric Bourassa. Added political science boffin Clyde Barrow. “It’s just like any other business. I suspect in a short order of time, people will not even think about it any more than they think about the Walmart down the street.” Encore = Walmart? Ow! That stings.
Accentuating the negative, the Boston Globe fixated on the issue of problem gambling (as though Encore was bringing something new to the Bay State). “When you introduce gambling into a community, you can mitigate problem 
gambling by implementing science-based prevention and treatment — Massachusetts is doing this, which is really good,” said psychiatrist Timothy Fong. Encore prexy Robert DeSalvio responded, “We do not want anyone who has any sort of problem with gambling to spend any money on that casino floor. It is not in our best interest at all. We want to make sure that they a) stay out, and b) that they get the necessary help that they would need.” As for the casino, Dect. Lt. Brian Conners of the state police says Encore should expect “Trying to add to an existing bet to enhance their winnings, or pinching a bet, where they’re trying to take chips away.”
The long-range goal of both DeMaria and Wynn CEO Matt Maddox is for Encore to be the start of something bigger and more multifaceted, not an island of prosperity in an industrial wasteland. “Our idea is to continue to redevelop this area so that it’s known as the entertainment district in the Northeast,” said Maddox. Wynn doesn’t have any concrete plans as yet but says that the performance of the resort will tell the company what needs to be added.
For the time being, Encore appears to be a smash success in a city notorious for prudery. The casino opened right on a schedule and, yes, there was a rush 
for the crab legs at the buffet, just like Vegas. There was also the inevitable hyperbole. “Boston is entering into a new era right now, being recognized as a global city,” said lead contractor John Fish. (Some of us thought Boston had reached global awareness a long time ago.) DeMaria gilded a lily or two, trilling “When you drive through Everett, you’ll no longer smell gas and sulfur and oils, but you’ll smell flowers.”
Gov. Charlie Baker snubbed the opening, as did Attorney General Maura Healy. Even the father of Massachusetts casinos, ex-Gov. Deval Patrick, didn’t show. And it would have been bad form on the part of Boston Mayor Martin “McCheese” Walsh to have bigfooted the occasion. McCheese always blew hot and cold on Wynn anyway, alternated lusting for the tax money it would generate and jawboning for a referendum that would have killed the project stone dead.
More than any civic flattery, the words that would be most musical to Wynn’s ears were those of player Charlie Freeman: “I don’t have to drive two hours to Foxwoods anymore. I’m going to come here as much as I can.” For his part, 
columnist Mark Arsenault couldn’t help reminding Foxborough that it has passed on the project (people who would patronize a Wynn Resorts casino don’t want to live next to one, it seems). As for the original condition of the site, “First impression was that it looked like a good place for the mob to bury a body. If that’s not a low enough bar, it wasn’t even true — the soil, in fact, was too contaminated for digging.”
That was the past. Encore Boston Harbor is going to shorten a lot of memories.
