by John Osborn
The Cordish Companies of Baltimore has made public a proposal to build a slots-only casino—Live! Casino and Hotel Massachusetts—at a site in Boxborough, just beyond the Harvard town line on the eastern side of Interstate 495.
At an April 22 meeting, Cordish representatives told the Boxborough Board of Selectmen that the company wants to replace the existing Holiday Inn hotel and meeting center just off Route 111, with a dining, entertainment, and gaming complex which would include three restaurants, a stage, and a "slot box" containing 1,250 "state-of-the-art slot machines and electronic gaming tables," the maximum allowed by the state. The present day atrium, swimming pool and surrounding hotel rooms would be renovated, leaving a "boutique hotel" of roughly 150 rooms for overnight guests. The remodeled facility would also contain 20,000 square feet of meeting space able to accommodate gatherings of up to 1500 people.
On Tuesday, representatives from Cordish were on hand in the Holiday Inn lobby to explain their company's plans. A proposed protest had failed to materialize, and Boxborough residents drifted into the hotel foyer in ones and twos to ask questions and view images of other Cordish developments. Among the several sites Cordish has developed—and now operates—are the Hard Rock casinos in Florida and the Maryland Live! Hotel Casino near Baltimore, now the largest slots casino on the east coast. Also on display were a preliminary schematic design for the Boxborough site, as well as renderings of possible entrance and nighttime lighting schemes. By Wednesday morning this week, a Cordish website had also gone live at livehotelcasinomasss.com, where more details on the scope and impact of the project could be found.
"We've picked a venue that's isolated, that will offer a great dining and entertainment experience, and provide benefits to the town," a company spokesman told the Press. While the company had looked at locations elsewhere in the state, he said, "We like this one the best."
Among the benefits that Cordish is promising Boxborough, according to its website, are annual tax payments of approximately $2 million, or roughly 15 percent of Boxborough's future tax collections.
For more information, please see the May 10 edition of the Harvard Press.