HARTFORD--The Mashantucket Pequots and Mohegans are reshuffling the deck, hoping to deal in more players to decide the site of Connecticut's third casino.
The tribes have called for more proposals, possibly by more municipalities, to be submitted by October 15.
Tribal leaders originally said they were going to have a Hartford-area site selected last November.
The vision was to have a $200 million to $300 million casino up and running before MGM Springfield's expected opening in fall 2018, and the tribes claim that is still the ultimate goal.
"Doing that for the sake of speed at the wrong location would be the wrong thing to do for us, it would be the wrong thing to do for that community, it would be the wrong thing to do for those employees if we don't land this where it's going to work," Kevin Brown, Mohegan Tribal Council chairman, said.
A site would still need approval from the Legislature, which won't happen before early January when it reconvenes.
MGM Resorts International issued a statement calling the "process" for another Connecticut casino "a sham." Here's the full statement:
This isn’t a process – it’s a sham. It is being run by MMCT, not the state, and MMCT is running it for its own purposes. Deadlines are set, then they’re missed. Towns are added, then subtracted. Unrealistic job numbers are created out of thin air, then thrown around with impunity. We’re told this is a ‘satellite casino,’ then when information is pried loose we see renderings of a casino larger than anything in Las Vegas. A ‘process’ like this is exactly how you end up with a baseball stadium that is unfinished, empty, and tens of millions of dollars over budget.
We continue to believe, strongly, that this so-called ‘process’ needs to be scrapped, and that a real process needs to be put in place. The General Assembly needs to create one that is open, transparent, fair, reliable and competitive. Public policy run by a private entity, made in secret, behind closed doors is a recipe for disaster.
