Twin River raises bet on gaming

BET ON IT: Twin River Casino employee Alicia Chattman deals to Lyn Dupree and Brian LeBeau, during training for this week’s introduction of table games. / COURTESY TWIN RIVER
BET ON IT: Twin River Casino employee Alicia Chattman deals to Lyn Dupree and Brian LeBeau, during training for this week’s introduction of table games. / COURTESY TWIN RIVER

At Twin River Casino in Lincoln, the first piece of a multiyear and multistate expansion of gambling in southern New England is almost complete.
After six months of planning, hiring and construction, the Rhode Island slot parlor’s transformation into a full-service gaming hall is ahead of schedule and ready for an unveiling at the start of July.
The Twin River expansion approved by voters last fall is Rhode Island’s response to a much larger bet on gambling by Massachusetts, which is creating three resort casinos and a slot parlor.
Critical details of the Bay State’s gambling expansion are also being filled in this summer with the location of the slot-machine license, potentially the closest new facility to Rhode Island gaming, and the first expected to be awarded.
Plainridge Racecourse in Plainville, just 19 miles from Twin River by car, is one of four groups bidding for the Massachusetts slot license.
The owners of Raynham Park in Raynham are also in the running, as are a Chicago-based company with a site in Worcester and a Baltimore company still searching for a site after being turned down by officials in Boxboro, Mass.
According to the schedule laid out by the Mass. State Gaming Commission, which is responsible for awarding all licenses under the state’s 2011 Gaming Act, the slot parlor should be the first to get a green light, possibly by the end of this year.
Spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said the commission is now investigating the 11 groups that submitted applications for licenses in January, along with a $400,000 nonrefundable fee, for the slot parlor and two of the resort casinos, one in eastern Massachusetts and one in western Massachusetts.
The groups considered suitable to go on to the next phase of the process in the slot-parlor race will be chosen by the end of this month and then face an October deadline to submit a final application.
“Suitable” bidders for the eastern and western resort casinos will be determined in August or September, Driscoll said, with a final award expected in the first half of 2014. The process for awarding the third resort-casino license, reserved for the southeastern part of the state, is trailing behind because of an effort to give preference to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe.
The tribe has so far been unable to secure federal approval to build a casino in Taunton, prompting the Gaming Commission to open the bidding for a southeastern casino to any commercial group.
The review selection process for a southeastern casino will take the same path as the other three licenses, but because even the initial applications haven’t been submitted yet, a decision likely will not be made until fall of 2014, Driscoll said.
Other than the Mashpee tribe’s plan for Taunton, the potential locations for other southeastern casino proposals are uncertain.
Regardless of the precise location of each new license, the expansion of gambling in Massachusetts surely will have a strong impact on Twin River and Rhode Island’s other existing slot parlor, Newport Grand in Newport.
A January 2012 report commissioned by Rhode Island from Christiansen Capital Advisors LLC estimated that the state would lose more than $100 million in annual gaming revenue with the full arrival of Massachusetts casinos.
Hoping to mitigate at least part of that bleak fiscal scenario spurred the state to allow Twin River to host table games. A similar proposal for Newport Grand was shot down by Newport voters in a referendum last November.
Newport Grand leaders, who said Massachusetts casinos would pose an existential threat to the former jai alai fronton if it didn’t add table games, have not publicly discussed their future plans since the election. Attempts to reach CEO Diane Hurley were unsuccessful.
As they prepare to open their expanded offerings next month, Twin River executives are now confident they can now compete with Massachusetts casinos wherever they eventually appear.
“From the beginning it was clear generally where the [Massachusetts facilities] would go – but we have our own plan on how we are going to compete,” said Twin River Chairman John E. Taylor Jr. Twin River is spending $7 million on renovating the current slot-machine hall to accommodate 66 new table games and a new VIP lounge for high rollers. The work, being done by Gilbane Building Co. of Providence, will fit entirely within the building’s existing footprint.
The new games include blackjack, craps, roulette and baccarat.
A poker room is not in the initial plans, but could be added if there is demand for it, Taylor said.
To make room for the new table games, Twin River is removing about 200 slot machines, reducing the total capacity to 4,500.
Taylor said at Twin River’s busiest moments, only about 80 percent of the slots are in use, pointing to significant excess capacity that he expects will be harnessed through greater overall traffic due to table games.
Twin River has already hired 350 new workers, many of them dealers, and plans to double that during the summer.
Taylor said about 80 percent of the new employees are coming from Rhode Island and many have experience working in the currently downsizing Connecticut casinos.
In studying the potential impact on Rhode Island of Massachusetts casinos, Christiansen Capital estimated which potential Bay State gaming locations would have the largest impact on Rhode Island revenue if they were selected.
Christiansen’s worst-case scenario included full resort casinos in Foxboro, Mass., and New Bedford, in addition to slots at Plainridge and a casino in the western part of the state. The best-case scenario placed the Boston-area casino at Suffolk Downs in East Boston and the slot license at Raynham Park (the Worcester slot proposal had yet to emerge at the time of the report).
Eighteen months after the report was put together, the Foxboro scenario is off the table – local officials rejected a casino near Gillette Stadium – but Crossroads Massachusetts LLC, led by Foxwoods Casino, has proposed a casino near Interstate 495 in Milford, Mass. The Milford plan still faces local opposition and stiff competition from Wynn Resorts’ bid for Everett, Mass., and Caesars Entertainment’s bid for Suffolk Downs, so something similar to Christiansen’s middle-impact scenario still looks realistic despite the uncertainty surrounding the southeastern license.
Eugene Martin Christiansen, chairman of Christiansen Capital Partners, said recently that the revenue projections in the Rhode Island report for table games at Twin River should still be on track.
If Plainridge wins the bid for a slot license, it would start a $125 million expansion of its property off of U.S. Route 1, which has hosted harness-racing since 1999.
To the east, Plainridge faces competition for the slot license from Raynham Park, a former greyhound-racing track that has hosted only race simulcasts since Bay State voters banned dog racing in 2008.
Raynham Park would spend $250 million to build a new slot parlor that would employ between 400 and 600 new workers, according to a presentation to Raynham town officials on the plan by B&S Consulting of Stonington, Conn.
Massachusetts Gaming and Entertainment LLC, led by Chicago-based Rush Street Gaming, wants to build a slot parlor in Worcester.
And PPE Casino Resorts, led by The Cordish Companies of Baltimore, is searching for a new slot-parlor site after town officials in Boxborough, Mass., rejected a proposal to build there.
Back at Twin River, Taylor said the size and experience of the bidders for Massachusetts licenses guarantees that the new Lincoln casino will be facing tough competition regardless of precisely who and where it comes from.
For a source of optimism, he pointed to Twin River’s regional market-share growth – from 15 percent in 2009 to 27 percent now – and the momentum generated by expanding.
“If you look at the field of people bidding on licenses in Massachusetts, they are the best of the best,” Taylor said. “They all come at the business from a different perspective, but we are going to be competing against the best operators in the world.” •

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