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MGM Executive To Visit Springfield To Reaffirm Commitment To Build Casino

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Paul Tuthill
Published October 1, 2015 at 4:12 PM EDT
MGM Resorts International President Bill Hornbuckle ( at left) with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno at the 2013 signing of the host community agreement for MGM's Springfield casino. The two men will meet Monday, Oct 5, to make public assurances that MGM is going ahead with the project.
WAMC
MGM Resorts International President Bill Hornbuckle ( at left) with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno at the 2013 signing of the host community agreement for MGM's Springfield casino. The two men will meet Monday, Oct 5, to make public assurances that MGM is going ahead with the project.
MGM Resorts International President Bill Hornbuckle ( at left) with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno at the 2013 signing of the host community agreement for MGM's Springfield casino. The two men will meet Monday, Oct 5, to make public assurances that MGM is going ahead with the project.
Credit WAMC
MGM Resorts International President Bill Hornbuckle ( at left) with Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno at the 2013 signing of the host community agreement for MGM's Springfield casino. The two men will meet Monday, Oct 5, to make public assurances that MGM is going ahead with the project.

A top executive with MGM Resorts International will be in Springfield next week to publically assure the company’s commitment to build a casino in the city.

A private meeting between MGM President Bill Hornbuckle and Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, with a press conference to follow, was arranged after MGM disclosed plans to eliminate a 25-story hotel tower from its planned casino and substitute a more modest hotel design. 

“Skyrocketing” construction costs were blamed for the change. 

Sarno said MGM is not backing down on building the $800 million project.

"No doubts at all and I would not accept it, " said Sarno.  " It is to move forward."

The tribes that run Connecticut’s two casinos say they’ll announced a location by the end of the year for a third casino that would compete with MGM Springfield.

Copyright 2015 WAMC Northeast Public Radio
Business News
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.
See stories by Paul Tuthill

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