Former Springfield, Mass., councilor touts East Hartford as casino site
For Tony Ravosa, a man promoting an East Hartford site as the perfect spot for a “satellite” casino, two things could have broken bad last year.
First, Mohegan Sun could have won the Greater Boston casino license that Massachusetts gaming regulators instead awarded to Wynn Resorts. Second, Massachusetts voters could have repealed the 2011 law that authorized Bay State casinos in the first place.
If either of those things had occurred, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Ravosa said Friday, the day after he went public with a plan to persuade the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to put a casino in an old movie complex along Interstate 84.
Many more things would have to break Ravosa’s way for that to even be a possibility, starting with the Connecticut legislature’s consideration of a bill that would enable the two tribes, owners of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, to fend off out-of-state competition by jointly operating as many as three satellite casinos in strategic locations.
But, if such legislation should become law — meaning the governor, who has yet to tip his hand, would have to sign it — Ravosa believes the East Hartford site he optioned months ago is far superior to any other, including Bradley International Airport.
“I’m prepared to put East Hartford up against any site,” said Ravosa, a Glastonbury businessman and former city councilor in Springfield, Mass., the very location of the $800 million resort casino that MGM Resorts International is building a few miles from Connecticut’s northern border.
The East Hartford site, a former Showcase Cinemas building, is readily accessible from I-84, I-91 and other routes that feed the Hartford area, with “significant frontage directly on the interstate,” according to materials provided by Ravosa. The existing 75,000-square-foot building could be retrofitted as a gaming and entertainment facility in less than a year, ahead of MGM Springfield’s expected 2017 opening.
“Speed to market and the site’s visibility from 84 are big pluses,” Ravosa said. “No site can match that.”
PKF Consulting, a firm Ravaso hired to analyze his plan, concluded “that a casino off I-84 in East Hartford would have a greater net economic benefit to Mohegan Sun, Foxwoods and the state than would a site significantly north of Hartford on I-91.”
Ravaso dismissed Bradley airport as a potential casino site, describing it as “well off the beaten path, with no visibility from the highway.”
Ravosa, president of the Vince Group, a consulting firm, said he began lining up a development team about 18 months ago and first approached the Mohegans late last year and the Mashantuckets a couple of months later. He said he has no agreements with either tribe. Previously, he was involved with a group that proposed a western Massachusetts casino at the Wyckoff Country Club in Holyoke.
Asked for their reaction to Ravosa’s East Hartford plan, the tribes stuck to a statement issued Thursday:
“The Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribal councils, who held a rare joint meeting … to discuss a memorandum of agreement and the development of a casino, are encouraged by the increasing number of towns that are expressing interest in developing an alternative gaming facility.
"The tribes believe that votes like the one taken by East Windsor selectmen this week, and proposals like the one from East Hartford, show an increasing understanding from businesses and municipalities that the potential for job loss from competition over the state border is real, and protecting them will be good for the state and the region."
East Windsor selectmen approved a resolution allowing town officials to explore the possibility of the town's hosting a casino.
Twitter: @bjhallenbeck
Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.
