Proposed East Hartford casino could link to Hartford hotel
Developers pitching a casino project in East Hartford announced Thursday that their plan now includes a link to a downtown Hartford hotel on the opposite side of the Connecticut River.
In a press release, Silver Lane Partners LLC said it has reached an agreement with the owner of the Radisson Hotel Hartford, which is at the corner of Morgan and Market streets near the junction of Interstates 84 and 91, “the most heavily trafficked interchange in the state of Connecticut.”
Shuttles would travel between the hotel and the casino, a distance of about four miles, according to Silver Lane Partners.
Tony Ravosa, Silver Lane’s managing member, said the plan has been presented to MMCT Venture, the Mashantucket Pequot-Mohegan partnership that’s pursuing a third Connecticut casino in the Hartford area.
Respective owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun hope to lessen the competitive impact of MGM Springfield, the $950 million resort casino being built north of the Connecticut border in Massachusetts. In addition to East Hartford, the tribes are also considering sites at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks and in Hartford.
“It’s a very intriguing proposal, one that certainly merits full consideration as we continue to evaluate locations for the project,” Andrew Doba, an MMCT spokesman, said of Silver Lane’s latest plans.
Inner Circle, owner of the Radisson Hartford, has begun a $6.5 million conversion of the hotel’s top eight floors into about 100 apartments, work that would reduce the number of hotel rooms from 350 to about 150, according to Silver Lane Partners.
At this point, the conversion plan could still be modified to retain more than 150 hotel rooms, the developers said.
“From the moment, we first unveiled our casino plan for the former Showcase Cinemas site (in East Hartford) back in April 2015, we have been steadfast in our efforts to find ways to enhance and leverage the value of our proposal — through linkage — to increasing activity at such taxpayer-funded, significantly underutilized assets as the Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field, the Connecticut Convention Center and Hartford’s XL Center, in addition to marketing and selling Greater Hartford as a compelling destination for both Connecticut and out-of-state visitors alike.”
Ravosa said the East Hartford-Hartford “linkage” proposal answers Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin’s appeal for a regional approach to economic development proposals. He said it could help jump-start the stalled development of a baseball stadium in Hartford.
“The decision as to the potential value of this opportunity rests entirely with MMCT,” he said. “We are merely bringing it forward for their consideration. However, one thing is for certain: The replacement value of the Radisson would be cost-prohibitive in today’s market.”
The hotel was built in the early 1970s and opened for business in 1973.
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