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Historic Church To Be Moved To Make Way For MGM Springfield Casino

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Paul Tuthill
Published April 19, 2016 at 11:19 AM EDT
The 129-year-old First Spiritualist Church sits in the middle of what will be the gambling floor of the $950 million MGM Springfield Casino.
MGMSpringfield
The 129-year-old First Spiritualist Church sits in the middle of what will be the gambling floor of the $950 million MGM Springfield Casino.
The 129-year-old First Spiritualist Church sits in the middle of what will be the gambling floor of the $950 million MGM Springfield Casino.
Credit MGMSpringfield
The 129-year-old First Spiritualist Church sits in the middle of what will be the gambling floor of the $950 million MGM Springfield Casino.

A historic church in Springfield, Massachusetts is being moved down the street to make way for the city’s new casino. 

Workers on Tuesday will start relocating the 129-year-old First Spiritualist Church from its current location to a new spot a few blocks away. 

The High Victorian Gothic brick church, originally known as the French Protestant Church, was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. It sits in what will be the middle of the MGM Springfield Casino gambling floor. 

Hunter Clayton, MGM Vice President of Development, says the casino company struck a deal with historic preservationists to save the church and several other buildings that will become part of the casino complex.

"In our opinion it is a good historic preservation story," he said in a 2015 interview.

MGM is scheduled to open the casino in September 2018.

Copyright 2016 WAMC Northeast Public Radio
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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