The Bio Park was going to be a hugely important development fom the region. UMASS Dartmouth had already planned investments totaling tens of millions of dollars. What’s going to happen with that, now? Well, here’s Chancellor McCormack:
“The City’s decision to abandon development of a BioPark in favor of a resort casino profoundly affects the university’s decision-making about a suitable location for our facility,” the UMass letter said. “Any delay in starting the project triggers a risk that state funding might be rescinded, so timing is important.”
Gone.
And what about the tribe paying the Commonwealth back it’s $50 million — or even the $36 million being spent right now for highway improvement?
When asked if the tribe would reimburse the state the $35 million for the highway ramp, a Wampanoag spokesman would say only that the ramp would benefit other property owners in Fall River, not just the casino.
Nada.
People need to remember this: If we allow one single, legalized slot machine in Massachusetts, we open ourselves to an untold number of tribal casinos in Massachusetts. That’s the bottom line. DeLeo’s six-casino plan could easily become twelve, given the number of tribes in this state with recognition or trying to attain it. And the latter casinos, including this one trying to steal upwards of $50 million from Massachusetts, wouldn’t even have to pay state taxes.
It’s sleazy that they are doing that, taking the state’s money that was supposed to provide access for the Bio Park and having it go to a casino alone.
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p>What is to be done?
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p>BUILD BOTH.
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p>Throw out the rulebook.
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p>First, make sure there are HUGE parking garages that are FREE, and provide more parking than both facilities could ever need.
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p>Have the ground floor and floors close to ground level go for casinos.
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p>Have spaces either in basements or on high levels go for the Bio Park.
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p>Take no excuses, and listen to no nonsense about how a little bit of grass on the sides is so important. It is not. If it was, they would not be building in Fall River.
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p>While a resort casino is a source of entertainment, a Bio Park is the future, and is something to be REALLY proud of.
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p>If this state cannot get past old ways and build it regardless of a casino or anything else, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
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p>People, with their ideas, are always colliding and mixing. Different people and things come together to make a new SYNTHESIS that meets the needs of the day.
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p>Ah yes, the perfect recipe for lowering our dependence on foreign oil, reducing roadway congestion, decreasing sprawl, improving quality of the pedestrian or cycling experience, and reducing our waistlines.
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p>Because nothing motivates scientists who have tremendous job opportunities elsewhere to pick Fall River quite like having to walk through/past/around a bunch of little old ladies slot machining away their New Deal or a bunch of drunk 20something bachelor partygoers so that they can go a basement laboratory.
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p>Cityfolk hate trees and grass. That’s why places like the Esplanade, Common, and Public Garden are always so empty.
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p>If this state ignores 100 years of understanding of urban planning, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
What matters is building Bio Park NOW, rather than waiting for perfect this, perfect that, and perfect everything.
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p>You’re better off building NOW and doing what it takes to get it started, than waiting for some perfect scenario for building that may never occur.
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p>If the people aren’t driving their cars into a parking garage, for the most part they would just drive their cars to another location that has what they are driving to.
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p>Building Bio Park is a very good idea. It doesn’t look like this casino is going away.
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p>Build up, build down, build around. But BUILD, and let’s get this done.
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p>Don’t stall Bio Park because the casino interests have chosen the site for a casino.
20 years from now, we will look at all these interchanges as monumental monuments to short-sightedness. People won’t be driving their cars much in 20 years, and the highways will be cracked with weeds and massive potholes.
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p>Don’t destroy this forest, don’t build a BioPark, don’t build a casino, don’t build houses or businesses or roads. Just don’t.
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p>Is this the site?
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p>Here is a brochure for the BioPark
He said a casino there would detract from any Bio’s being willing to build there. You ignored that. You ignored all his other fine points, too.
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p>What makes you think the casino would even want the bios there? They’re the ones who will be trying to buy this land. A biopark is well, well out of the state’s hand by then.
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p>The two just don’t go with each other, so the question must be asked: Do we want good jobs, in a good industry that will grow other jobs all around it and will provide ample opportunities for everyone from PHds to tech assistants to administrative, to maintenance. Or do we want an industry that will destroy what few businesses are already in that area? You could pick up Fall River and shake, shake, shake and believe it or not, thousands of jobs would fall out… and that’s exactly what casinos do to cities and towns where they’re built. Just look at Atlantic City, or Detroit. Casinos went in and made things much worse, crushing local businesses to the tune of thousands of jobs.
In light of Cape Wind’s approval, we could start manufacturing wind turbines in Fall River, providing good paying factory jobs in an area that needs them. If they produce two a month, we’d have Cape Wind up and running fully in a little over five years, and then we could continue producing turbines for other off-shore projects.
Apparently the turbines will be made in Ohio, at a Siemens plant.
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p>Maybe a turbine factory would work out well in Fall River, why not?
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p>In addition, how about trying to get a textile industry going again here? We’d have to subsidize it, and tax imports, but there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s good to have local textile industries.
Manufacturing businesses (especially something like a wind turbine) require a local vendor base and a favorable business climate.
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p> I assume the wind turbine business requires vendors involved in the aerospace business – Massachusetts has never been involved in this.
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p>The turbines could be manufactured and installed before you would have permits issued for the construction of a wind turbine plant.
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p>Speaking of energy, think of the energy and resources it takes to built a new plant. The economic theory called comparative advantage isn’t some Ivy tower economic concept it’s a fact, let an organization that knows how to built wind turbines built them.
Pratt & Whitney is located in Connecticut, they have many suppliers located in the northeast, including Massachusetts. According to the Mass Aerospace Council, there are over 1,200 organizations in Aerospace with some connection to Massachusetts.
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p>As they say,
Assuming away an industry doesn’t do economic development any good – the only reason we can’t build turbines here is because someone else figured out how to plop a business down before we did.
but someone else already did plop a business down somewhere else and has made the investment.
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p>BTW Massachusetts has lost most of it’s heavy industrial base. There is a lot of health care manufacturing going on but very little heavy industry.
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As long as they insist that something has to be built on that site, I’m just agreeing with whoever it was that proposed a wind turbine factory, that it would be better than a casino or a biopark. Maybe it’d be impractical for the reasons you cite, maybe it makes better environmental sense to make them in Ohio. But I just didn’t want to poo-poo the idea knowing nothing about it.
To quote from a famous Massachusetts writer. “I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere.”
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p>Legalize gambling everywhere, or not at all.
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Huh? No aerospace?
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p>From the Wiki gods:
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p>Same plant some of our DC folks have been working to keep open.
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p>By the way, that’s the plant that built the first American jet engine.
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p>Let me see. Jet engine’s a turbine. Wind mill’s a turbine. Huh, wonder if the two are related. Maybe some of the old cross-fertilization is possible. Maybe with the threat to the plant’s future, they might want to think about diversifying a bit.
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p>Oh, and by the way, the first rockets were launched near Worcester, and the first helicopter flew in Connecticut, and MIT’s had a thing or two going in aerospace over the years – some called Apollo, I think.
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It would have been, “Cambridge, we have a problem.”
In fact, I think it opened before the assassination.
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p>But, what might have been?
A jet engine is not an electric turbine and the turbine blades made from carbon fiber have been dicey to build. You buy a product like this from a proven firm that has been manufacturing them.
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Toyota for years worked on quality – they would never make a new car at a new factory – in the past 10 years they figured they could change this process – look at what happened.
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Doesn’t the state have to approve the casino location? Can’t it say “sorry, no casino in Fall River unless you repay the money”?
This deal that was struck was struck with a tribal casino. Once we legalize slots for other casinos, that opens the doors. The city of Fall River owns the land in question, so I really don’t think the state can do much to stop this Fall-River bait and switch, unless public scrutiny reins their crazy Mayor in. Thankfully, four city councilors have already stepped up, demanding a slow down to this process (the City Council didn’t even know any of this stuff was going down).
Obviously, the casino doesn’t exist yet (and hopefully ever).
is how idiotic is the fantasy that the right laws and the right Governor can channel this into the precise desired configuration.
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p>You might as well command the waves on the beach to wash up here but not there. Even if you build a breakwater the tide will eventually flow around or over it.
Any idea what the so-called biopark will employ, Lie-Power? 12 people. That’s right, 12 people. It is, at best, a minor testing facility. No more, no less.
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p>There is no rendering of the facility. There is no RFP. There is no blueprint. There is nothing whatsoever. It is, basically, an idea on paper. That’s it.
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p>We need a cost-benefit analysis of the proposed biopark. It is starting to sound like another one of those Sal DiMasi-Dan Bosley economic stimulus rip-offs that gives taxpayer money away to fat cat businesses that contribute to these crooks’ campaign accounts.
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p>How about it, folks? A cost-benefit analysis of the biopark?
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p>Or are you afraid of the truth?
These 12 scientists are good people who have a valuable contribution to make.
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p>The whole world may be waiting for what they will do.
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p>Still, arrangements for office space are made based upon number of workers.
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p>Twelve people are very few. There is plenty of empty space for them to move in to.
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p>When faced with the prospect of losing a source of both jobs and scientific breakthroughs, I am willing to dispense with many wide-spread expectations and conventions to get it done.
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p>I thought that the Bio Park would be larger than that.
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p>They will build a casino in the usual way, and I have no problem with that.
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p>As for building a wind turbine factory in Fall River, I say YES YES YES, and MORE, PLEASE. Fall River or anywhere else in this state.
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p>Building parts for wind turbines is the future, and it’s something to be proud of. It will also get factory jobs for the unemployed.
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p>In the anti-casino Democrat belt, in the western part of the state, people will see that casinos don’t make “hell on earth.” Of course, they are not a cure-all either. What happens with other lines of business and the economy in general will determine what happens to most people.
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you may want to get your facts straight. 12 scientists =! 12 workers. It actually = a lot more.
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p>But let’s even say only 12 people would work there. That’s just one of the things that would go in there, and the UMASS facility would spur others on to building there. It’s exactly the kind of investment needed to get the entire project going. The South Coast will never go anywhere without UMASS Dartmouth leading it at the forefront.
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p>And the casino isn’t?
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A) What makes you think there hasn’t been one?
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p>B) I’ll support a cost-benefit analysis there, when DeLeo supports a cost-benefit analysis on his special interest pet project that became his #1 priority in office.
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p>Proudlib, it is years past due for you to finally declare any and all of your conflicts of interest. You are the biggest hack on this site. Declare, or go away.