The Cliche King of Plainville, Joe Fernandes needs to find more appropriate quotes, even more so because Plainville has historically ignored opportunities offered that would have written a brighter future.
All representations of financial gain ignore the KNOWN future expansion of the proposed Slot Barn into a full blown 'casino' with no amenities. [Joe Fernandes attended the Gam[bl]ing Commission's Educational Forum at which FUTURE EXPANSION was discussed. I know! I was there and saw Joe Fernandes, along with the Plainridge entourage, including Sticky Finger Piontkowski.]
Plainville vote renews bid for compensation
Wrentham and Mansfield are also considering their options.
That doesn’t sit well with Plainville officials and many residents in the small town just a few miles south of Gillette Stadium.
“I don’t think people in glass houses should be throwing stones,” Plainville Town Administrator Joseph Fernandes said, referring to Foxborough.
Foxborough Board of Selectmen has put the topic on the agenda for its next meeting Tuesday night, according to acting Town Manager Robert F. Cutler.
“I fail to see how, in any significant way, this could impact them anywhere near to the degree [Gillette Stadium] impacts us. It’s extremely disingenuous considering their impact on other communities,” he said.
Dale Bergevine, a 55-year resident of Plainville and member of the pro-casino group People for Plainville, took it even further.
“They should be embarrassed to come here and ask for anything,” he said.
Foxborough’s officials, as well as those in Mansfield and Wrentham which also border Plainville, tabled any effort to negotiate mitigation when it appeared the Plainridge project was dead last month after the state Gaming Commission determined its owners unsuitable to hold a license.
But plans for a slots parlor and restaurant complex at Plainridge Racecourse at the junction of
Interstate 495 and Route 1 were resuscitated two weeks ago when Penn National Gaming made an eleventh hour move to secure an option to buy the harness racing track after its bid for a slots parlor in Tewksbury failed.
Last Tuesday town voters endorsed the proposal by a slightly better than 3 to 1 margin in a townwide binding referendum.
That has pushed the Foxborough Board of Selectmen to put the topic on the agenda for its next meeting Tuesday night, according to acting Town Manager Robert F. Cutler.
As chairman of Foxborough’s Racino Review Committee, established by the Board of Selectmen to study the impact slots at Plainridge would have on the town, Michael Davison said his town is only protecting its interests, as the state’s gaming law allows.
“Was it fair for the people in Plainville when Gillette was built? Possibly not, but that’s how the law was written. The law in this case says we can ask for mitigation.”
The state’s gaming law requires casino operators to identify surrounding communities and to negotiate agreements with them to address any potential negative effects, such as traffic.
Eric Schippers, senior vice president at Penn National said the company plans to meet with each of the surrounding communities before the Oct. 4 application deadline.
Davison’s committee in Foxborough spent several months researching the impact of a casino at Plainridge before the original proposal was derailed, he said.
The committee found that the town can expect to see a 5 percent spike in problem gambling, “along with the attendant social ills that come with this, such as DUIs, bankruptcies, divorces, ambulatory and police calls,” according to a letter from the committee to the Board of Selectmen.
In addition, traffic in South Foxborough will see an increase, which will overburden roads that already see more traffic than they were built to handle, the letter continued.
Davison said it is the social impact that most concerns his committee.
“The development will be small enough that there won’t be a tremendous impact on our infrastructure,” he said. “But there is going to be a social impact, and we are going to ask for mitigation.”
In Wrentham, Town Administrator William F. Ketcham said the town’s focus has been on the traffic impacts along Interstate 495 expected from the casino being proposed in Milford, just 15 miles north of town, rather than the slots parlor proposed next door in Plainville.
“There is not so much concern as much as interest in at least having MAPC [the Metropolitan Area Planning Council] look at the possible impacts in Wrentham,” he said.
In Mansfield, Town Manager William R. Ross said there are people in town who have some concerns, and that the town is looking at its options.
“But you need to feel comfortable in doing something, and feel ethical about what you’re doing instead of saying, ‘You’re getting a pot of money and we want some too.’”
To Dale Bergevine and others in Plainville, any amount of mitigation given to neighboring towns is too much.
“We’re here in no man’s land, we’re the Burmuda Triangle stuck between the Wrentham Outlets and Gillette,” he said. “We get nothing but traffic.”
If the state Gaming Commission grants the lone slots license to Plainridge, the town will get about $4 million a year in new revenue, 300 construction jobs, 400 full-time positions, and improvements to Route 1 and Interstate 495 to mitigate increased traffic.
“Four million dollars for a postage-stamp size town like ours is a lot of money,” Bergevine said.
Penn National has also committed to keeping the harness racetrack operational if it is granted the slots license, something that is not considered economically feasible without the additional revenue generated by the added gambling operation.
There are two other competitors for the slots license: The Cordish Cos., planning a gambling parlor in Leominster, and Raynham Park, the simulcast betting parlor and former dog racing track in Raynham. Like Plainville,Raynham voters endorsed the Raynham Park proposal in a binding referendum. Residents of Leominster will vote Sept. 24.
Foxborough, Wrentham, Mansfield worry over slots parlor proposal in neighboring Plainville
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