Can the Bay State really house three Marina Bay sized casinos?
The Boston Globe’s Sean P. Murphy has taken a close look at Governor Deval Patrick’s claim that the Governor’s casino proposal will create 30,000 construction jobs in Massachusetts. Murphy presents evidence that suggests that the proposal will at most create 20,000 construction jobs, and that’s if casino developers build three very large casinos in the state and each casino development hires close to 7,000 workers. The one casino mentioned by Murphy that uses that many construction workers is one under development in Singapore:
In his study, [The Innovation Group economist Scott] Fisher looked at the $2.85 billion casino in Singapore being developed by Sands and projected the creation of about 6,900 new construction jobs. [Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon] Adelson has not detailed how much money Sands would spend on a casino in Massachusetts, but Fisher’s study said a casino in this state would be “comparable in scale” to the Singapore development. Under that formula, three casinos built at a cost of $2.85 billion each would create 20,700.
I assume the Singapore-based casino in question is the Marina Bay Sands resort, the first of two casinos that the island nation’s government has agreed to license in an effort to dramatically increase tourism.
In an 8-K filing to the SEC in November last year Sands reported that there are “an average of 2,000 workers on site” at Marina Bay, but I don’t know how that translates to total number of construction jobs.
It should be noted that the casino was touted as the most expensive in the world when it was announced in 2006. It’s not merely a casino but a so-called integrated resort that is expected to pull in a lot of Meeting, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibitions business. It’s possible that having four massive convention centers (the three casinos plus the existing one in Boston) would result in a much bigger MICE pie for Massachusetts, but perhaps it is more likely that the three additional convention halls would cannibalize existing business?
Personally, I favor the establishment of one big destination/IR/MICE casino and I really don’t care where they put it as long as it’s more than 15 miles away from where I live.
Regardless of how many construction jobs one, two or three casinos would bring to Massachusetts one is well served to keep in mind that the purpose of a building isn’t to bring employment to construction workers. The number of construction jobs is a poor reason to favor or oppose regulated casino gambling.
That said, would it kill our Governor to stop playing games with job projections?
