Massachusetts has been home to two casinos for a long time, and its citizens have been waiting for the third one for a very long time. Their wait was finally over, as the Encore Boston Harbor finally opened its doors to visitors on Sunday. The casino was announced years ago, and, since then, it underwent a series of deadline postponements, controversies, and more. Nevertheless, the wait is finally over, and the $2.6 billion facility welcomed its first visitors.
Needless to say, the grand opening was packed with people who even occupied all the pathways and the harbor walk surrounding the complex. They cheered as the new casino workers officially cut the ribbon and pronounced the casino opened from then on. The casino’s workers made up almost 10% of all the people who visited it on Sunday, and there are 5000 people working in it. In other words, almost 50,000 people visited the casino on its grand opening day in order to try the latest slots and table games.
The entire facility consists of a bronze hotel tower that has a total of 671 room. Furthermore, the gaming floor consists of 3100 slot machines, in addition to 231 table games. In addition to the hotel and the casino, there are also 15 bars and various restaurants for people who like to try new dishes. Moreover, the former industrial land located in Everett, Massachusetts, will also have art displays, shops, and more. Everett is a city that is located north of Boston and has approximately 46,000 residents. The casino aims to transform the city and make it gain a reputation as tourists would probably start to flow in from all parts of the US and the world.
The Mayor of Everett, Carlo DeMaria, told the crowd during the opening ceremony, that people who drive through Everett would no longer smell things such as sulfur, gas, and oil. Instead, he added, they would smell trees and flowers. The enthusiastic crowd welcomed these words ecstatically, as Everett has been an industrial town for a very long time. In fact, the entire area where the casino was built used to be an industrial zone, following the coast of the Mystic River. DeMaria concluded his emotional speech by stating that they would no longer be seen as Boston’s back door, but rather as Everett’s front door. Finally, DeMaria thanked everyone, especially his wife and his family for giving him the support to make the entire process concluded and have a casino built in the city of Everett.
The building was a long and painful process that took more than seven years before the casino was completed. The entire development project required that certain preparations be made in order to commence casino building, and one of them was to clean up the environment from debris made by the former chemical plant.
There was already a lot of controversies that surrounded the casino building process. For example, Wynn Resorts was the only operator to win the state gambling license, which was reserved for Boston five years ago. This casino became the only casino operated by Wynn that is not located either in Las Vegas or Macau. Nevertheless, they managed to pull it off and build a casino that successfully opened its doors on Sunday.
The CEO of Wynn Resorts, Matt Maddox, stated that he remembered standing with the Mayor DeMaria on the site of the casino nearly seven years before the opening when there hadn’t been a single blade of grass. Now, he stated, there are more than 50,000 flowering plants and thousands of shrubs for the first time in a century.
