"Perhaps it’s good that Fall River might some day host a casino. Maybe when city leaders can gamble with their own money, they won’t risk the whole city’s well-being.

When Mayor Will Flanagan announced his intentions last month to lure a casino to Fall River, identifying 300 North End acres as the most viable location, he insisted he wasn’t pushing aside the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, which already had a deal with the city to build a bioprocessing plant on the land that would become the SouthCoast BioPark. He presented the university with alternate parcels to build the BioPark and said he was working with UMass Dartmouth on a new location at the same time he was negotiating with the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe for a resort casino. It was assumed — and expected — that Flanagan would rework the existing deal with UMass Dartmouth before committing to a new one with the tribe.

Then the city pulled the rug out from under the university.

Flanagan has pushed all in, announcing a deal with the tribe last week for a casino, three hotels, a mall and a water park. Following his lead, the Redevelopment Authority voted 4-1 Wednesday to sell the 300 acres to the Wampanoags for $21 million, stripping away in a month a project that had been planned for a decade."

Get the Story:
OUR VIEW: Rolling the dice (The Fall River Herald News 5/28)

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