Town officials in New Hampshire in November approved a developer's proposal to build a casino at the Rockingham Mall, a project that drew the unanimous opposition of city councilors over the border in Lawrence, Massachusetts, out of fear that it will heavily target financially desperate residents of their city.
The Planning Board in Salem, New Hampshire, appeared to give the Lawrence City Council's plea to block the project little consideration before it voted 5-2 two weeks ago to approve a site plan and use permits for a "charitable gaming" establishment at the site of an old Lord & Taylor store.
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The project calls for 1,340 gaming positions, restaurants, event space and more. The project would rise at a location that's about a 15-minute drive from Lawrence City Hall and would represent a new gaming option for people in the Merrimack Valley or North Shore.
In her successful gubernatorial campaign this fall, New Hampshire Governor-elect Kelly Ayotte rallied Granite Staters around a pledge she won't "Mass. Up New Hampshire." But in the resolution unanimously adopted by the Lawrence City Council a week before Salem's vote, city officials argued that putting a large casino right on the border would only make many of the societal problems New Hampshire politicians often blame on Lawrence in particular even worse, including poverty, addiction, and fentanyl and human sex trafficking.
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"[T]he business model for the proposed Rockingham Mall casino relies heavily on targeting the financial desperation of Lawrence's low-income workers, elderly, and disabled, many of whom will be lured with free bets and other incentives to drive to the casino four to five times a week; and ... this life-changing addiction causes the kind of human misery like very few things can including significant increases in rates of personal bankruptcy, divorce, domestic violence and, gambling addiction has the highest rate of suicide of any addiction," the council resolution read, acknowledging both the city's standing as the "poorest in Massachusetts" and the legal gambling options already available in Massachusetts.
The casino project is being proposed by one of the largest developers in Massachusetts, Lupoli Companies, along with Maryland-based developer-operator The Cordish Companies and its Live! brand, and Joe Faro, the businessman behind the Tuscan Brands and the Tuscan Village, which is adjacent to the proposed casino site. Lupoli has also done development and community work in Lawrence.
The developers said the $160 million "Live! Casino Salem" project would feature "900+ historical horse racing machines, 40+ tables, including poker," an event space, a golf simulator, a sports lounge, restaurants, a bar and more. Horse racing machines operate similar to slot machines. It would generate $128 million in annual economic stimulus to the region and create 700 permanent jobs, the proponents said in materials submitted to Salem town officials.
