Wynn unveils Everett resort casino plans

Some 4,000 jobs would be created to build the casino that Las Vegas developer Steve Wynn is proposing for this city, a plan that includes a 19-story hotel with 550 guest suites, some as large as a single-family home.

Mayor Carlo DeMaria and Gamal Aziz, chief operating officer of Wynn Resorts Development, this afternoon provided the first detailed description of the casino proposal they hope will ultimately win the ferocious winner-take-all battle for the sole Greater Boston resort casino license. 

The other competitors are Suffolk Downs, which has proposed a casino at the East Boston track with partner Caesars Entertainment, and Foxwoods Resort Casino, which has joined an effort to build a suburban gambling resort off Interstate 495 in Milford.

The Wynn plan would cost between us$1.3billion and us$1.5 billion to construct and would create 4,000 permanent jobs once the tree-lined waterfront development and its modern, bronze-glass hotel opens its doors.

Wynn, who has designed some of the most elaborate casino hotels on the Las Vegas strip, such as Bellagio, Mirage, and the Wynn and Encore resorts, is calling the local development Wynn Everett. 

He wants to build the luxury hotel at the former Monsanto Chemical Co. site, a polluted plot of vacant industrial land between Route 99 and commuter rail tracks in Everett, near the Boston city line.

Suffolk Downs, which for most of 2012 was the only viable contender for the Greater Boston license, was not about to let Wynn hog all the attention today. The track this morning announced a 3:15 p.m. press conference to unveil a new 3-D model and updated renderings of its $1 billion gambling resort proposal.

The Everett proposal is Wynn’s second try for a Massachusetts casino license since the state legalized Las Vegas-style gambling in 2011. The billionaire developer made a pitch to build a casino in Foxborough near Gillette Stadium, proposing a design that resembled an enormous ski lodge. He dropped the plan due to local opposition, and then made his bid for a casino in Everett shortly before the gambling commission’s January 15 application deadline.

The Everett site is at the moment a homely piece of land, but Wynn found features of the property extremely attractive, such as the view across the Mystic River to downtown Boston. He is positioning the hotel to take advantage of the city views.

Wynn also was intrigued about building a resort on the river, and has designed the project with boat docks and a river walk.

The property is oddly shaped, with a rectangular section that juts into the river, “which is one of the challenges of the site,” Wynn said in a January Globe interview. “The part of the site that sticks into the river is 300 feet wide at the narrow part and is sort of like a peninsula, and I gotta figure out how to integrate the peninsula part into the fatter part of the property.”

The solution Wynn came up with proposes a long, narrow retail and restaurant promenade extending from the hotel down the length of the peninsula.