Dec. 14–Wynn Resorts is going all in for Monday’s hearing on the suitability of its proposed $1.3 billion gaming palace in Everett after the state gaming board backed a land deal for the pricey project yesterday.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission approved Wynn’s revised option to buy a former industrial site in Everett from FBT Everett Realty LLC 4-0 on the conditions that the sale price be no more than $35 million — about $10 million of which would go toward environmental cleanup — and that the three partners who control the 29-acre parcel sign under oath a notarized document saying they would be the sole recipients of the cash.
Wynn originally had an option to buy the property for $75 million. He renegotiated the deal to pay what its appraiser deemed to be the fair market value of the land if it were not to be used for a casino after the commission’s investigators found out about convicted felon Charles Lightbody’s alleged 12.5 percent hidden ownership stake in the property and the “complex web of questionable conduct by his partners.”
“He and his partners were trying to double- or triple-blind his interest,” said Karen Wells, director of the commission’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau.
In December 2012, Lightbody told Darin Bufalino, an organized crime figure now serving a state prison sentence, that Wynn couldn’t buy the land from a felon, “but the only good thing is, nobody knows who’s involved which makes it good because now I can just move on, you know what I mean? So basically they’re going to buy me out,” according to bureau records released yesterday.
Former Gov. William Weld, who represents Wynn, said the company “had no knowledge of possible misconduct on the part of the sellers.”
Besides Lightbody, other stakeholders in the property included Paul Lohnes, a former business partner of Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby, who had a 50 percent stake, according to bureau records.
Crosby recused himself from yesterday’s vote but intends to vote on Wynn’s suitability.
Bureau records show he and Lohnes have known each other dating back to their days together in the National Guard in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Lohnes was an investor in a publishing company Crosby co-owned until 1990, when the business was sold.
Since then, the two have had “limited contact with one another, probably meeting purely socially no more than ten times over the past 23 years,” according to the bureau’s report.
Reached at his home yesterday, Lohnes declined to comment.
Crosby is now being sued by Caesars Entertainment, which alleges that he “singled out” Caesars’ Suffolk Downs bid in Eastie for “adverse treatment,” effectively ending its bid for the coveted Eastern Massachusetts casino license in order to help out Lohnes.
