CasinoWatch

The great casino debate; The money behind our local tribe

The great casino debate on Beacon Hill
Mass. wants the tax revenue on the billion spent annually in Conn.

The great casino debate promises to be among the loudest, longest fights on Beacon Hill in the new year.  Proponents say Massachusetts residents already flock to gambling dens in Connecticut, dropping $900 million to $1.1 billion a year. And the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian tribe is well on its way to getting federal approvals to build a casino in Middleboro.

While other states allow commercial and Native American casinos, race-tracks with slots machines, and riverboat gambling, Massachusetts is losing out on the jobs and revenues from gambling, proponents argue.  Opponents who hope to keep casinos out of Massachusetts, feel as justified in their cause...  MetroWest.  
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The men and money behind the Wampanoag Tribe
One built a notorious South Africa apartheid-era resort

The financial backers for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe's Middleboro proposed casino are well-known high rollers, but hardly three of a kind.  They include two white South Africans - one of whom built a notorious apartheid-era resort - and an ambitious African-American real estate mogul who brought casinos to his home city of Detroit.

Detroit native Herb Strather was the first to deal into the Wampanoag project. Since 1999 he has spent $15 million to bankroll the tribe's successful quest for federal recognition. He also paid $1.7 million for the Middleboro acreage.  Now billionaire investor-developers Len Wolman and Sol Kerzner have brought big money to the table, confident that they can repeat the success they've had with Connecticut's Mohegan Sun, a Rhode Island slot machine venue and other such projects.

Thirteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars in profits later, "I think our results speak for themselves," Wolman said. In many ways, Kerzner and Wolman are unlikely partners - a 72-year-old child of Russian Jewish immigrants who has bought resorts and casinos from the Bahamas to Dubai, and the 52-year-old farmer's son who still manages a small empire of hotels from unobtrusive offices in Waterford, Conn...  MetroWest.