Massachusetts' First Casino Set To Open

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Paul Tuthill

Published June 23, 2015 at 7:06 PM EDT

The first casino in Massachusetts opens to the public Wednesday.

Plainridge Park Casino, located at a harness race track near the Rhode Island border, has 1,200 slot machines, but no table games.

The more upscale resort casinos planned in Springfield and greater Boston won’t open for at least two years.

Casino industry expert Clyde Barrow said Massachusetts should do well with its first casino.

"It is strategically positioned to intercept a lot of traffic coming out of central and southeastern Massachusetts on its way to Twin River (casino). That was the original purpose of the slot parlor," he said.

Plainridge will have 600 employees. It is projected to bring $80 million in annual revenue to the state.

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Paul Tuthill

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.

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