Mashpee Tribe still considering New Bedford
as casino site, despite Middleboro land purchase

MIDDLEBORO, Mass. – Trading Cove at Mashpee, the equity partnership teaming up with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe to develop and operate a casino in southeastern Massachusetts, is expected to close today on its purchase of a 125-acre parcel in Middleboro, a spokesman said.

The land was purchased by Trading Cove on behalf of the tribe for $1.76 million, Scott Ferson at The Liberty Square Group in Boston, the tribe’s public affairs and communications firm, told Providence Business News in a telephone interview. “We expect the tribe to petition the federal government to take the land into trust in the next several months,” he said.

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The Middleboro parcel was part of 375 acres in the town on which the tribe had obtained purchase options. But that doesn’t mean it has ruled out New Bedford as a possible site for its future casino.

The Mashpee Wampanoags are still in talks with both Middleboro and New Bedford, as they have been since before they won federal recognition on May 23, Ferson said. Now, he added, Trading Cove is handling the negotiations on the tribe’s behalf.

“[The tribe] hasn’t chosen one over the other,” Ferson said. “It exercised the option in Middleboro because it was within 45 days of expiring. … And it’s a nice piece of land.”

Whichever site is chosen, the future casino already is under fire from both anti-casino activists, who have come together to form casinofacts.org, and from the Narragansett Indian Tribe, which describes the plan as “a stab in the back to Rhode Islanders.”

The Trading Cove at Mashpee partnership – led by Twin Rivers owners Len Wolman, head of resort developer and operator the Waterford Group LLC and managing partner of Trading Cove Associates, the company that developed Mohegan Sun, and Sol Kerzner, chairman and CEO of Kerzner International Ltd. (NYSE: KZL), which has a 50-percent stake in both Trading Cove Associates and the Atlantis, a resort in the Bahamas – is “another chapter in a greed-filled scheme by Twin Rivers’ owners to make millions of dollars … at the expense of Rhode Island and its taxpayers without the need of a vote or constitutional amendment,” the Narragansetts’ chief sachem, Matthew Thomas, said in a statement last week, adding that, “by denying the tribe its full federal rights necessary to achieve economic self-sufficiency, both our tribe and Rhode Island’s economy suffers.”

Ferson responded that “The [Mashpee Wampanoag] Tribe is the one that is proposing the casino,” and it has always needed a partner with the expertise and the $1 billion needed to complete the project. “The tribe sought a partner that was capable of building the highest quality facility – and that partner is Trading Cove,” he said.

“The Mashpee Tribe is in complete support of the Narragansetts” in their drive to regain the full federal rights granted other recognized, Ferson added, and the Mashpees appreciate the Narragansett Tribe’s support of their own efforts.

Thomas also said that, with Twin River paying a 60 percent gaming tax in Rhode Island and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe pushing for a 25-percent gaming tax in Massachusetts to compete with Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, that “you can be sure that Wolman and Kerzner will aggressively drive as many Twin River patrons as possible to their Massachusetts casino.”

But Ferson was quick to note that, although the Mashpees are seeking the lower gaming tax, “right now, there is no arrangement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”