By all reasonable accounts and by all standard methods of measure, Suffolk Downs appears poised to gain a casino license when and if the legislature finally gets around to taking up the subject and doing something substantive about it.
All signs from high places point to Suffolk Downs receiving a casino license.
Mind you, it isn’t something overt that is going on. It is simply something that makes sense that is about to happen.
The senate chairperson for the committee on gambling said in so many words in last week’s Sunday Globe that he had seen designs of an urban casino and that the designs made good sense – as casinos make good sense.
Again, casinos bring construction and jobs, an expanded retail and commercial marketplace for food and clothing and for entertainment of all kinds.
In other words, an urban casino at Suffolk Downs isn’t all about gambling.
It isn’t exclusively about playing at a card table or tossing coins into a slot machine.
It is about the creation of jobs and a new flow of tax money for the city and the state.
In this instance, an urban casino at Suffolk Downs is all about a new flow of tax money for the cities, that is, for Revere and Boston.
Now is the time for our city government and our legislative delegation needs to make preliminary determinations as to exactly what percentage of the new take at Suffolk Downs will be ours.
This is the inevitable, important bottom line.
A lot is riding for Revere on Richard Field’s impossible dream.
If he gets his urban casino we get a tax boost almost undreamed of.
What exactly it might be is the question – a worthy question indeed to ponder.