It’s not quite official but the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority has thrown in its lot with Suffolk Downs, one of the dwindling number of candidates for a Massachusetts casino license (and where a big redesign is well underway). Mohegan Sun wasted no time shaking the dust of Palmer from its soles. The latter recounted the votes from the Nov. 5 plebiscite and the end result was a one-vote increase in the margin whereby Mohegan Sun was defeated. It was a narrow — and potentially foolish — rejection, with only 94 votes separating victory from defeat. It’s now MGM Springfield or nothing. And, judging by the alacrity with which Mohegan Sun was able to whip out a revised rendering of Suffolk Downs (above), they’ve been plotting this move a while now.
In another tale of shifting loyalties, architect Dan Keating was against Market8 Casino in Philadelphia before he was for it. Keating, the lead builder in Steve Wynn‘s bid had slagged Market 8 publicly. Like someone emerging from a Communist re-education camp, Keating proclaimed that he could now “more fully understand” Market 8. “We now believe that in every important respect, the Market8 project stands head and shoulders above all other proposed projects, and that this is an opportunity that it would be unfortunate for the city and commonwealth to miss,” he serenely proclaimed. Keating’s change of loyalty is timely: Suitability hearings will be held at the end of next month.
Andre Nestor and John Kane are free men today, having beaten the system. The duo discovered a flaw in an International Game Technology device that enabled them to tilt the odds in their favor. However, since they were merely exploiting an extant flaw in the machine, not tampering with the device, the government had a difficult time making a case against them and ultimately decided that prosecution was too much of a gamble, shall we say.
