Wynn Resorts withdraws River Wards casino application

An artist’s rendering of Steve Wynn’s proposed Fishtown casino and hotel. COURTESY OF WYNN RESORTS, LTD.

At 2:04 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 11, Wynn Re­sorts re­leased the fol­low­ing state­ment to news me­dia:

“The Wynn Re­sorts Board of Dir­ect­ors re­cently met to care­fully ex­am­ine the feas­ib­il­ity and op­por­tun­it­ies as­so­ci­ated with the com­pany’s do­mest­ic de­vel­op­ment in Phil­adelphia, Pennsylvania. At this time, the Board has de­cided that the best course for the com­pany is to pur­sue busi­ness op­por­tun­it­ies else­where.”

“The board took a host of factors in­to con­sid­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing the Phil­adelphia mar­ket per­form­ance over the past year and the com­pet­i­tion which will res­ult from the re­cent ap­prov­al of gam­ing in the State the New York. Con­sequently, the com­pany will with­draw its li­cens­ing ap­plic­a­tions in Pennsylvania.”

Wynn’s team would not comment further when contacted by Star.

Ac­cord­ing to the Phil­adelphia In­quirer, this is the second time Las Ve­gas casino mag­nate Steve Wynn has dropped the op­tion of build­ing a casino in the city: “In April 2010, Wynn agreed to part­ner with loc­al in­vestors to sal­vage the fal­ter­ing Fox­woods pro­ject on Colum­bus Boulevard. But a week after he re­vealed his in­volve­ment, he dropped out.”

Wynn has pro­posed a casino very sim­il­ar to the Fishtown ro­pos­al in Ever­ett, Ma., a town just out­side Bo­ston. That pro­pos­al still stands.

The Phil­adelphia casino was to be built, if gran­ted a li­cense, on the Delaware River wa­ter­front in Fishtown, on land north of the Sug­ar­House casino — it would have filled 70 acres along Rich­mond Street, from Schirra Drive to Columbia Av­en­ue.

Wynn had joined five oth­er de­velopers lin­ing up for a chance at se­cur­ing the city’s second casino li­cense.

On Tues­day, Sept. 24, the Pennsylvania Gam­ing Con­trol Board had met to dis­cuss each of the de­veloper’s pro­pos­als.

Deputy mayor Alan Greenberger said at that hearing that the Wynn hotel and casino pro­posed for a wa­ter­front site in the River Wards has the po­ten­tial to ac­tiv­ate un­used wa­ter­front space, but did not seem spe­cif­ic to Phil­adelphia, was in an isol­ated loc­a­tion, and needed more de­vel­op­ment of plans for pub­lic green space.

“A power­ful trans­form­a­tion could take place on our wa­ter­front,” Green­ber­ger told the PGCB, in ref­er­ence to Wynn Re­sorts’ pro­pos­al, which, in con­junc­tion with Sug­ar­House Casino, could po­ten­tially cre­ate a new en­ter­tain­ment des­tin­a­tion.

“We do have some con­cern about the ex­tent to which the es­tab­lished Wynn product has been or will be tailored more spe­cific­ally to Phil­adelphia,” Green­ber­ger con­tin­ued. “We are aware that Wynn Re­sorts is pur­su­ing sim­il­ar op­por­tun­it­ies in oth­er mar­kets along the East Coast … We would like to hear more from the ap­plic­ant about why Phil­adelphia — and this some­what isol­ated site — will be par­tic­u­larly at­tract­ive to in­ter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors com­pared to ex­ist­ing Wynn re­sort des­tin­a­tions and pro­posed Wynn re­gion­al casi­nos.”

Neigh­bors at­tend­ing meet­ings of the Fishtown Neigh­bors As­so­ci­ation and Olde Rich­mond Civic As­so­ci­ation earli­er this year both voted in fa­vor of the Wynn pro­pos­al. The pro­pos­al has also seen pos­it­ive en­dorse­ments by the New Kens­ing­ton Com­munity De­vel­op­ment Cor­por­a­tion and Port Rich­mond on Patrol and Civic.

Philadelphia City Councilman Mark Squilla (D-1st dist.) told Star on the phone Monday that he was shocked to hear that Wynn had withdrawn his application.

“We had a lot of interest from the community surrounding that project, but you had heard people saying he would back out,” Squilla said.

“I think that would have really boosted that area, especially the [riverfront green space] trail part,” Squilla continued. “I looked at it as an opportunity for that area as well as the surrounding community. It’s a little disappointing.”

In a Feb­ru­ary present­a­tion by Wynn Re­sorts, Wynn him­self de­scribed Wynn Phil­adelphia as a “des­tin­a­tion re­sort,” one he said could po­ten­tially be­come “the nicest hotel on the East Coast,” cit­ing Amtrak trains as key to lur­ing in cus­tom­ers and guests from oth­er cit­ies. The Wynn casino would have boas­ted slot ma­chines, poker tables, lux­ury suites, and a 2,000-foot river­front green space as well, where Wynn said fam­il­ies could stroll in­de­pend­ently of the gambling space without get­ting “any­where near a slot ma­chine.”

The PGCB has an­nounced in Septem­ber that its fi­nal hear­ings for the ap­plic­a­tion pro­cess would be held in Janu­ary 2014. The casino li­cense, then, won’t be awar­ded to one of the now five de­velopers un­til some point next year. ull;•