You don't need a weatherman....

Foxwoods announced it laid off almost 200 middle managers today, a move believed to be the first of its kind in the casino's 16-year history.

People sometimes ask me what I think about the future of Connecticut's casinos and all I can say is what I know about their present: They're teenagers, both figuratively and literally. They're fighting some strange battles — unions, economic unease and, today, layoffs — now that they're no longer the cute, new kids in the northeast.

And it will probably be some years before they settle into a regular rhythm, if they ever do.

With my sincerest apologies to Gabriel Garcia Marquez

As I sat in construction traffic leaving Mohegan Sun this morning, I wondered (I wonder a lot if you haven't gleaned that already) whether we'll even recognize the casinos five or 10 years from now.

It wasn't an unreasonable thought as blasting reduced more of the cliffs around the casino to rubble to expand access.

Long ago, during an time of my life I'd like to call the Vermontian era, I was brought to southeastern Connecticut for the weekend to attend a wedding. We ended up at Foxwoods after the reception — me, two drunken bridesmaids, their dates and someone who ostensibly was my date but about whom I was beginning to have my doubts. My earlier tipsyness (I was not driving that night, but that's a whole other story for another time) was wearing off just as my blindness from having had my contacts in for the last 16 hours was rising.

While they went and danced in some sort of nightclub in the round, I sat at a bar, soaking my voluntary cataracts in little shotglasses of water provided by a very, very comforting bartender. That part of the night had held little more than some random guy offering to buy me a drink and suggesting I ditch my date — not a fantastic idea since I had no idea where in the hell I was in Connecticut let alone New England — and me escorting the drunken maidens to the bathroom more times than I can count.

I left Foxwoods that night and Connecticut the next day. I didn't return to the state for five years, not even passing through on the way to somewhere else. I didn't set foot in Foxwoods again until I was hired to write about casinos for the Bulletin.

For the last year, on each trip there be it business or pleasure, I've looked for that nightclub, those bathrooms, that bar without much success. Wondering (yes, again) if it was still possible to catch a glimpse of that younger me wearing a dress I had searched for weeks to find but ultimately went unnoticed and sitting at a bar blind but with certain aspects of my life coming disastrously into focus.

About a month ago, my then-date, now roommate (yeah, talk about long stories for another time) and I went to Sunday dinner at Foxwoods. Turns out he hadn't been there in years, either. As we wandered around and I pointed out changes they had made to accommodate the MGM Grand, we cruised past Slots 360. "Hey," he said, "this was the nightclub we went to after my sister's wedding."

I stopped for a second, surveyed the room and thought, 'Man, how could I have NOT recognized this, even in its latest incarnation?'

And then I hoped folks playing the slots in there ultimately had more luck that night than I did all those years ago.

Have your say

So, what do you think of the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods? Does it feel like Connecticut's third casino or an expansion? Good place to hang or for special occasions only?

Post your comments below. We'd love to know.

Oh, it's morning all right

Once a week, most Bulletin reporters get the pleasure of working a shift that starts at 6 a.m. And, for the first two hours or so, it's just you, the fluorescent lights, the distant hum of a far-off ventilation system and the crackle of the police scanner.

Now, scanners are on all the time in newsrooms. When I worked for a paper in Burlington, Vt., a scanner call was how one editor learned that firetrucks were on their way to extinguish a blaze started by her daughter's desk lamp. At the Bulletin, we hear an assortment of calls throughout the day — police reporting in with their canine partners barking in the background, people stuck in elevators in one casino or the other and whatnot.

The calls are also an interesting peek into what's important to eastern Connecticut at the moment, how people are really living. A woman whose car broke down on Interstate 395 got a ride to her job at Lowe's in a cruiser. Police issued a lookout for an Illinois car driven by a woman who talked of Newport, R.I., bridges and taking her own life. And somewhere in Colchester, a stray cow had found its way onto the front lawn of a house along Old Colchester Road.

Sure newsrooms live and die by excitement, breaking stories and such, but quiet is nice, too, sometimes if only for the chance to sit and listen to the pulse of the people we cover.

10 days and counting

And counting. And counting. And counting.

Ten days in New York State is clearly measured differently than in eastern Connecticut because three developers, including a group with Mohegan Sun as a partner, seeking to bring slots to New York's Aqueduct racetrack have been waiting for 10 days since at least May.

Latest word this morning from spokesman for Capital Play, the group to which Mohegan Sun belongs, on a revised timeline for the state to make a choice? Before the Fourth of July.

And that is, by my count.....

10 days away.

What can $130,000 buy you these days?

1. Half an average one-family home in New London County.

2. A hand-built Mercedes Benz AMG S63

3. A break in sliding slot revenues....

By ERICA JACOBSON

Norwich Bulletin

Posted Jun 16, 2008 @ 11:37 AM

---

Mohegan, Conn. —

Mohegan Sun broke eight months of sliding slot revenues in May by doing almost $130,000 more than the $75 million it made in May 2007.

The casino reported this morning it had taken in $75.1 million in slot revenues in May, up 0.001 percent from the same time last year.

Foxwoods Resort Casino, which opened its $700 million MGM Grand at Foxwoods expansion mid-May, had yet not released its numbers by 11:30 a.m.

Slot revenues had been in a free fall since September. In April, Mohegan Sun was off by 5 percent from the same month in 2007 and Foxwoods was off 11 from the same period.

When slot revenues slide, so do the contributions to the state's general fund. An agreement between the tribes and the state sends 25 percent of each month's slot revenues to Connecticut's coffers and Mohegan Sun will give just less than $18.8 million from the business it did in May.

Bumping back into sovereignty

For everyone who wrestled with understanding the nuances of sovereignty during the Foxwoods-UAW hearings earlier this year, the issue has a new face — 4-year-old Rain Thomas. The girl, daughter of Mashantucket Pequot Chairman Michael Thomas, is at the heart of custody battle between her tribal member father and a non-tribal mother.

Yet again, Connecticut's jurisdiction is blurry. Local courts defer to custody decisions already made by the tribal court. State police say they have jurisdiction to enforce arrest warrants on the reservation that Connecticut feels are valid. And the girl's mother, Vanessa Hyman, appears to be asking any court she can whether they can return her daughter.

In the navy, indeed.

I saw the Village People open for K.C. and the Sunshine Band on a date at a fair in Vermont. So, I can't help but smile just a little at this news....

http://www.mohegansun.com/entertainment/schedule-of-events.html?featureid=2292b15a

Well, I've just about heard everything now

Turns out Bob Dylan will grace the MGM Grand at Foxwoods theater stage Aug. 15. Yeah, Bob Dylan.

I'll admit, despite the best efforts of several people, I've never been a huge Dylan fan. But I've always understood his counter-culture, folky stance to be, well, in direct opposition of all things glamor, glitz and ritz. Turns out there are at least two other casino stops on his late summer, early fall tour.

Esteemed coworker and Dylanite Dustin Racioppi said he'd probably be in the audience, despite the somewhat intriguing venue.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on with old Bob," he said.

The times, indeed, they are a changin'.

Get those lighters handy

And those black T-shirts, too, because the casino concert season is upon us. Which tickets have you snapped up?

Also, take a look at the results for the poll about visiting the MGM Grand at Foxwoods (scroll down to under "Old Polls"). Looks like curiosity won't kill a bunch of cats in eastern Connecticut. It also made me wonder, are there any long-time/life-long residents who have NEVER been to the casinos? It'd be interesting to hear why....

Well, that was enlightening

Looks like a dead draw on why the United Auto Workers pulled their request to represent between 80 and 120 slot technicians at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

Meanwhile, it looks like it won't play in Peoria. There, the UAW is contesting a company-wide smoking ban by Caterpillar (one of THE major employers in town), saying it violates union contracts. The difference between that situation and the recent attempt to ban smoking at Connecticut's casinos (which the UAW was behind) is the source of the smoke. At Caterpillar, it is employees creating secondhand smoke for other employees. At the casinos, it is visitors creating a smoky environment in which employees have to work.

And for those who argue smoking bans won't cut into casino business, credit analysts Moody's and Standard and Poor's respectfully disagree. Both have used smoking bans as a criteria for assessing fiscal health and outlook — and not in the positive aspect.

Sigh. Listen up, people. Again....

Mashantucket, Conn. —

A 56-year-old Massachusetts man wanted for the armed and attempted abduction of a relative of a Massachusetts police officer was arrested by Connecticut State Police on Wednesday afternoon at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

You know, I've done several stories about how casinos are the worst place for anyone running from the law to hide...just sayin'.

To the reader who keeps sending me love notes from the Reagan era....

...thank you for poking around in the Reagan archives so the rest of us don't have to. It's interesting reading for those of us, like myself, who didn't grow up in eastern Connecticut, didn't grow up anywhere near the Mashantucket Pequots or their pre-recognition reservation.

I did, however, grow up across a river valley from Stateville, one of Illinois' esteemed penitentiaries. In the winter, when the leaves were off the trees, the glow from the institution's orange sodium lights could be seen through the picture window in the living room. As I grew up, I got used to passing anti-death penalty protesters rallying before executions as I drove to go the movies or the mall. Occasionally, someone visiting us would bristle at the closeness of the facility with its high walls frosted with silver curls of barbed wire. I'd just shrug. "They stay over there," I used to say, "and we stay over here." There was no secret, no hiding, no subterfuge. It was a prison and that was just that.

When I first started covering Connecticut's casinos and their tribal owners a year ago, I thought the situation must have been similar between Ledyard and the Mashantuckets. And, oh wow, was I wrong. If I had a buck (inflation's rough, you know), for every time someone pulled me aside and told me, off the record of course, how the tribe seemed to come out of nowhere, well, I'd at least be able to buy a tank of gas (about 17 gallons, thank you) for my daily ride.

It's been nearly 25 years since the Mashantuckets became a tribe and, in another 25 years, there will be fewer and fewer people who remember what Ledyard was like pre-Pequot. Do you? How about Mashantucket members before the federal government made them a tribe?

I'd love to hear your stories if you do. Sharing, you know, is caring....

Vote off the table for fourth union

"A request to organize slot technicians at Foxwoods Resort Casino was withdrawn Monday, just hours before attorneys for the United Auto Workers and the casino were to meet at the National Labor Relations Board in Hartford.
Neither the UAW or the Mashantucket Pequots, owners of Foxwoods, would comment on the move, but a board spokesman said the decision to pull a petition is not uncommon.
“It’s a rational thing for them to do,” John Cotter said. “If they don’t think they’re likely to win, they withdraw.”
He described the letter, a copy of which was not available Tuesday, as one sentence and filed just hours before a Monday afternoon hearing scheduled to determine whether the election request was valid."

With two failed union votes within a month, table game dealers nowhere near the negotiating table with Foxwoods administrators and a call to bargain languishing in Washington, it appears the union momentum has stalled.

That said, with a stalled economy and jobs being harder to find, maybe the bottom line is behind this decision for the 120 employees.

What do you think? Take a sec to cast a vote in the poll. Or, even better, leave a comment because, c'mon, you know you miss Story Chat....

Job insecurity?

The Las Vegas Review-Journal is reporting construction workers at MGM Mirage's CityCenter might walk off the job after a sixth worker was killed at the building site since work began in early 2007.

Perini, the same construction manager the Mashantucket Pequots used to build the MGM Grand at Foxwoods, is in charge of that project as well.