Gambled And Lost

In an expected move, the other night a proposal to build a casino along Route 1 in Foxborough was voted down by the townspeople. In the wake of the defeat Patriots owner Robert Kraft and casino owner Steve Wynn, the main financial backers of the plan, have said they will shelve any further attempts to go forward with the plan. Now, in the interest of full disclosure I will admit that since I am not a gambler I was not in favor of this thing. I have awful luck when it comes to gambling and as such I only do it on rare occasions, so it is not like having a casino this close was going to change my life in any positive way. All it was going to do was make it harder to visit my sister. But, I don't live in Foxborough so I didn't have a say either way, which means the only reason the vote kept me interested was as an observer of people. From my perspective it never seemed to me that people were 100% against the plan, they were just enough against it to vote it down. To put it another way - I don't think anyone had a problem with the idea of a casino in Foxborough, where the issue arose was in the location. They wanted to put the casino across the street from Gillette Stadium in what is now a parking lot and many people had concerns about congestion. If you live around here you know that area is already impossible to get through on game days and I don't think anyone was looking forward to dealing with an increase in traffic every day of the year.

I honestly think this proposal had a chance of going through if they could have just found another place to build it. Perhaps down the road, closer to Rt 495. (Not technically Foxborough anymore, but seeing as how Kraft lives in Brookline I don't see why it would really matter.) If you've ever driven that stretch you would know all we would lose is a bunch of seedy motels that no one seems to stay at outside of Patriot games. The first signs that you could tell the issue wasn't going well for Wynn and Kraft when you started to see ads pumping up the merits of the casino appear on local TV, but not a single one telling people why it was a bad idea. It was almost as if the people opposed to the casino saw no need for them. After all, no one unnecessarily spends money if they are confident of victory. Driving around the area I don't remember seeing any signs in favor of the plan, yet saw many signs against it on the lawns of towns which only bordered Foxborough. You just never got the feeling this idea was ever going to get off the ground, no matter how many local ads showed up on TV. Still, the most telling thing about the pro-casino ads were that they weren't being produced by anyone around here. Even the Facebook page in favor of the casino was started by a guy who lives in Miami.

There is a reason the saying, "all politics are local" has stuck around for so long. That is because no one wants to hear how they should be voting on an issue from people who aren't going to have to deal with the aftermath every day. Everyone thinks the town getting a new sewage treatment plant is a wonderful idea, right up until the moment they vote to put in in your backyard. I'm sure from his home in Miami the man who started that Facebook page (who at least was originally from the area), thinks a casino in Foxborough is a great idea. Of course he does, as it will never affect him. But when you have to drive that stretch of road twice a day the idea of an extra 2,000 cars in your way isn't nearly as appealing. The fact that pro-casino side could never find anyone in the area to get out front as the face of the plan pretty much doomed them from the start. In that respect you almost have to admire the Wynn-Kraft group. Almost from the start every person I saw interviewed on TV or in the paper had the same reaction to the plan: "Not a bad idea, just a bad location." So, they had to know they were fighting a losing battle and yet they hung in all the way until the final vote. I don't know if they had bad information, surrounded themselves with 'yes' people who told them things were going well or thought they could buy enough votes it got closer but whatever their reasons, they went down swinging.

Despite saying that the proposal is shelved for the foreseeable future, I expect this issue to crop up again sooner rather than later. People like Steve Wynn and Bob Kraft didn't get to the positions they are in today by being easily-deterred. If you remember what Foxborough Stadium was like before Gillette and the surrounding Patriot Place complex, you get the feeling Robert Kraft isn't the kind of guy who walks away from a challenge and Steve Wynn has made a very good living building casinos all over the world, so I doubt this is the first time he has run into a group of people who are not enthusiastic about his plans. Not to mention Massachusetts actually seems to be in favor of an in-state casino, tired of everyone driving through on their way to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. They just are waiting for the right deal to come along. My guess is Wynn and Kraft will simply change their approach and come back next time with a better plan of action, whether it is in Foxborough or another town. They may have lost this round, but I wouldn't bet against these two in the long run.