"A section of the state’s new casino gambling law that was intended to give a head start to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe may now be working against the tribe. The section requires the Mashpee to meet a July 31 deadline for concluding local and state gambling negotiations over a casino site, or they lose their preferential status and face a slew of competitors.

“I don’t think they can satisfy the deadline,” says Dennis Whittlesey, a Washington, DC-based attorney who specializes in tribal gambling. Whittlesey represented Middleborough in the town’s 2007 negotiations with the Mashpee. He says each of the hurdles the Mashpee have to clear – finding land for a casino, selling a municipality on the idea, negotiating a local mitigation agreement, striking a compact with the governor, and getting that compact through the Legislature – is a potentially time-consuming exercise. Taken together, Whittlesey says, “It would be a mad dash to get it done.”

The Mashpee Wampanoag has been scouring southeastern Massachusetts for a casino site for months. The tribe struck a deal to locate a sizable casino in Middleborough in 2007, before abandoning that site – and the financial backers who underwrote the purchase of more than 300 acres – in favor of a property in Fall River. The Fall River deal subsequently fell apart, as did talks to partner with George Carney, owner of the Raynham Park dog track. Casino watchers are now eyeing a Bridgewater property, a parcel on the Wareham-Plymouth line that was to have been the home of Plymouth Rock Studios, and the bank-owned Silver City Galleria in Taunton as possible landing spots for the tribe. The Mashpee, now backed by the Malaysian gambling giant Genting, are said to be weeks away from making a land acquisition announcement."

Get the Story:
The Mashpee mad dash (CommonWealth Magazine 1/27)