Who would have thought, during the darkest days of the last recession, as Connecticut casinos laid off workers and watched gambling revenue fall off a cliff, that those casinos would start building and hiring again so soon?

No one is predicting a bright future for Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, with Massachusetts poised to siphon off so much business, a new straw next to the New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island straws, which have already been drawing down a pool of gambling dollars the Connecticut tribes once had all to themselves.

Still, there is a lot of positive development on the two eastern Connecticut reservations.

At Mohegan, a big yellow construction crane, the beginning of a new $120 million hotel scheduled to open next fall, stands almost as tall as the existing hotel tower and dominates the skyline.

At Mashantucket, the Pequots have just opened, with their new retail partner, Tanger Outlets at Foxwoods, a dazzling 80-store indoor retail mall that connects the two casino towers.

It's encouraging to see such an impressive project, one that required a busy jobs fair to staff, come on line at the sunny end of the recession. 

The new mall certainly strikes a new era of retail at Foxwoods, which, after it first opened as the only casino in the northeast, offered only a few newsstands and some Indian-themed stores selling dream catchers and turquoise jewelry. The focus was on adding ever-more slots.

Who would have thought then that Foxwoods would be home someday to retailers like Brooks Brothers and Gap?

I do remember that, although the casino had no bookstore, it did offer in the few stores it did have a lot of racks of former Gov. Lowell Weicker's autobiography for sale.

After all, Weicker, who signed the slot machine deal with the tribe, is the patron saint of Connecticut gambling. I suspect the Weicker books didn't sell much better than the dream catchers, though.

I give the Pequots a lot of credit for forging ahead, under the leadership of their last CEO, Scott Butera, with a business plan for developing a big outlet mall at Foxwoods.

It already seems to have breathed some new life into the former MGM Grand tower at Foxwoods, a badly conceived project that lost its branding when MGM decided to go into the Massachusetts gambling business and compete directly with the Pequots.

The old MGM casino, now a starting point for the Tanger mall, was as busy this week as I've ever seen it. And the mall connects the two main casinos in the sprawl of Foxwoods much more logically than the crazy long blank corridor and tunnel that it supplements.

Cleverly, they've designed the mall in a way so that you can only enter by passing one of the casinos.

And yet there is a distinct atmosphere once you're inside, as the sound of the music and slot machines fades away and the cigarette smoke disappears. Business here is measured at cash registers.

Big retail outlet stores add one more amenity to Foxwoods, which has theaters, a golf course, a museum, swimming pools, multi-starred hotels and lots of restaurant choices.

There's already a lot of resort on the ground here for new Massachusetts casinos to compete with.

Here's hoping that Connecticut lawmakers — some eastern Connecticut wet blankets notwithstanding — continue to see the wisdom of giving the tribes at least one satellite near the Massachusetts border, to help keep at home Connecticut gambling dollars.

A satellite/feeder casino can only help them maintain, staff and continue to develop the mother ships here.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsCt