Steve Wynn enjoyed success at the highest levels of the gaming industry during his long career, but in many ways the $2.4 billion Wynn Boston Harbor project was positioned to be his penultimate prize.
All that’s changed in the wake of explosive sexual harassment allegations in the press and a flurry of stockholder lawsuits. The combination has knocked him out of the chairman’s office and, soon enough, clear off the Wynn Las Vegas property without a severance package and his legacy in tatters.
The allegations themselves have caused members of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to gasp in private. In public, they’ve announced an investigation. Perhaps they may also rethink whether their due diligence during the licensing process relied more on Wynn’s previous track record and representations than original investigative work.
Investigators had better get busy. Their reputations are on the line, too.
The Boston Globe in a recent editorial left little doubt there was no room for Wynn’s name and the ugly images it now conjures in the community.
“Ditching Wynn was obviously necessary,” the newspaper argued in the wake of his departure. “Renaming the company is another needed move, so that his disgraced name never rises over the Boston skyline. But those are first steps, not final ones. So what if the $2.4 billion Wynn Boston Harbor casino is half built? Wynn Resorts’ suitability to operate remains an open question.”
The Boston Business Journal echoed that sentiment in an editorial headlined, “Everett casino should drop ‘Wynn’ name.”
Wynn’s failure to disclose to gaming authorities in 2013 a $7.5 million settlement paid to a Wynn Resorts salon manicurist in 2005 has been slammed in the Boston press, and it’s sure to be remembered as gaming investigators claw for a little credibility in the weeks ahead.
Said gaming commissioner Gayle Cameron, “Our investigation has to continue. Finding out exactly what happened (and) when is … critical to any decisions we make.”
Steve Wynn was the face of the company at home and throughout the Boston road show. He sparred with a mayor and jousted with the media and eventually won over a fair number of critics.
And now the face of the deal has retreated into the shadows.
The question of keeping the Wynn name on the building is more than media chatter. It’s also a reminder that Wynn’s Las Vegas legend only stretched so far. Massachusetts isn’t Nevada, where Wynn has held almost unprecedented political clout. Now his name has become an embarrassment to those who risked their own political capital to support the casino plan.
It’s more than mortifying. It also threatens to force rapid change inside the company. That will mean more pressure to evaluate the hasty decision to name longtime Wynn loyalist Matt Maddox as the new CEO. Maddox appears to have impressed Massachusetts gaming commissioners, but he should have tough questions to answer in the coming weeks.
This week, reports the Boston Globe, state officials are floating a plan to construct a 780-foot pedestrian and cycle bridge across the Mystic River from Somerville to the suburb of Everett where the casino is located. It’s the kind of fortuitous business arrangement Wynn enjoyed in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Three transportation agencies have signed onto the plan with the company agreeing to fund a $250,000 feasibility study and foot some of the estimated $33 million cost of design and construction.
It will be interesting to see whether officials remain quite as enamored of the bridge plan now that the Wynn name has gone from shimmering to radioactive.
The shredding of Wynn’s staggering severance deal in the wake of his departure was surely intended to counter the rising criticism that the board and general counsel had acted as little more than cheerleaders for the chief executive. But that isn’t slowing the stockholder lawsuits.
Nor would it appear to have softened the resolve of attorneys for Wynn’s ex-wife Elaine Wynn and former partner, Kazuo Okada.
With the threat of more ugly developments to come in the protracted and recently filed litigations, far more than Wynn’s tarnished image will be scrutinized in Massachusetts.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
