Steve Wynn appears to be losing patience with the obstacles being thrown in his way by seemingly vanquished adversaries in his long fight to get a Boston-area casino. He’s filed a defamation suit against the city, after a lawsuit championed by Mayor Martin “McCheese” Walsh basically accused Wynn of being mobbed up. Or, as the Boston Herald put it, Walsh’s administration “alleges that former state troopers working as private investigators for Wynn may have known about the criminal ties to the property, a revelation the city says should lead Wynn to lose its license, if proven true.”
Sore losers Revere and Somerville continue to litigate, as does a citizens’ group that takes exception to an agreement Wynn Resorts cut with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for
land that would give him an access road to his casino. Although Wynn is taking umbrage at the Walsh lawsuit, the latter’s target is the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. Like other litigation, it accuses the MGC of giving Wynn favorable treatment and wants the MGC’s site award revoked. Massachusetts has tried to get the lawsuit tossed — and got it thrown back in its face by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Janet Sanders, despite pleas that Boston’s 153-page torrent of legal verbiage was “effectively unanswerable.” On days like this, it seems like it will take a miracle for Wynn’s Everett resort to get built.
* If you want to know how much MGM Resorts International got from its Circus Circus Reno and Silver Legacy sale the answer is no more than $375 million, judging by Eldorado Resorts’ debt offering.
* Georgia seems like an unpromising market for casino expansion, considering that it is glutted with 25,000 gray-market “sweepstakes machines,” which the state has perhaps reluctantly legitimized to put the — pun intended — gamier operators out of action. That’s one disincentive MGM Resorts faces at it contemplates a $1 billion Atlanta casino. Of course, no such thing would be legal in Georgia right now, which is Problem #1. A leisurely election timetable is problem #2. If — a big “if” — the Legislature were to pass a constitutional amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority, it would have to do it in time to get the question on the November 2016 ballot … in the face of staunch opposition from Gov. Nathan Deal (R, pictured). Constitutional amendments can’t be put to the electorate in odd-numbered years. That means that MGM would have to wait until 2018 for Atlantans to have their say, too. (The Georgia constitution is limited to amendments of “general and uniform applicability throughout the state,” making it a local issue as well.) So, best case scenario, MGM wouldn’t get its shovels in the ground before 2019 — plenty of time for a raft of other pitfalls to be brainstormed.
* While I wouldn’t be taken in by the “grave concern” of the Culinary Union for the corporate purity of Station Casinos, recent developments present an opportunity for the Fertitta Brothers to get Deutsche Bank out of the ownership picture, possibly at a substantial discount. Seems that a United Kingdom subsidiary of DB has pled out to felony charages and will pay $2.5 billion in fines to U.K., U.S. and New York State authorities. The case against DB — too complex for cursory summary — includes conspiring to fix interest rates, among other particulars.
Basically, DB stinks to high heaven and the question is whether the Nevada Gaming Commission will do anything about it. Now, the only thing the Commission dislikes more than misconduct is actually 
having to act on it. Remember, Sam Nazarian got a gaming license despite engaging in some of the same activities that cost Ted Binion his. But the NGC will probably draw some imaginary line between “good” Deutsche Bank and “bad” Deutsche Bank that spares it from having to impose any discipline. Too bad for the Fertittas: Were it not for Nevada’s complaisant regulation, they could probably have Station all to themselves.
