Casino developers seek wide tourist base

Developers of the proposed casino in Middleborough envision a destination resort that would draw a national tourist clientele because of its proximity to Cape Cod and would be crammed with 4,000 slot machines, 180 table games, and amenities like a 10,000-seat auditorium for sporting events and shows.

The details of the proposed Mashpee Wampanoag Indian casino were spelled out for the first time in a business plan recently filed by the tribe and developers with the US Department of the Interior, which must rule on the viability of the small tribe's ambitious plans.

The business plan sketches a complex for the 550-acre site that is large by national standards, but not a record-breaker: a total of 850,000 square feet, which is smaller than South Shore Plaza in Braintree at 1.6 million square feet and the Natick Collection, formerly the Natick Mall, at 1.7 million square feet.

It would have 10,500 parking spaces, compared to 13,000 park ing spaces at the Foxwoods casino in Ledyard, Conn.

The 4,000 slot machines in the plan are only half as many already in operation or planned at Connecticut's two casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, but it shows plenty of room available for future expansion. At a planned 400,000 square feet for the gambling floor, the Middleborough facility would be about one-third larger than the gambling space at Foxwoods and Mohegan, which are among the world's largest casinos.

The size of the planned gambling floor could easily accommodate 7,000 or 8,000 slot machines, said Clyde W. Barrow, a gambling researcher at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

"They must be planning to expand the number of slot machines because, at 400,000 square feet, there is lots of room," he said.

Scott Ferson, a spokesman for the tribe, said the plan "speaks for itself," declining further comment.

Foxwoods currently has 7,200 slot machines, with plans to expand to 8,700; Mohegan Sun, Connecticut's second casino, has 6,200 slot machines with plans to expand to 7,600. Even with that capacity, the plan says there is $1.5 billion in unmet demand for gambling in New England.

The plan was drawn up by Sol Kerzner and Len Wolman, developers of the Mohegan Sun, who are in partnership with the tribe. It was filed to demonstrate the viability of a planned casino and resort to officials of the Department of the Interior, which has authority to decide whether to deem the land in Middleborough an Indian reservation. The department reviews the planned casino for its likely impact on the tribe's economic welfare, as well as its impact on the local and state governments. The town of Middleborough signaled its approval of the proposal July 28 when townspeople voted by a 2-to-1 margin in favor of a host agreement. The agreement calls for the casino operators to pay the town a minimum $7 million a year in lieu of taxes.

Without a designation as a tribal reservation, the Mashpee Wampanoag and their partners would be unable to open a casino under the federal Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which was passed in 1988 to give struggling tribes a new source of income.

The Gaming Regulatory Act spells out a laborious federal process to get around state prohibitions on gambling, including taking lands into federal trust on behalf of the tribe. The developers are on a parallel track with state officials, separately pursuing an agreement with Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature that would exempt the tribe from state gambling prohibitions in exchange for sharing as much as 25 percent of the gross revenue with the state.

Patrick is expected to announce whether he will embrace such an agreement next week.

The eight-page business plan touts the casino development experience of Kerzner and Wolman. Kerzner, for example, owns and operates the Atlantis resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas, along with facilities in Mexico, Maldives, Mauritius, and Dubai, the plan says. "Kerzner is currently working on over $3 billion in development projects," the plan says.

The plan enumerates several factors likely to make the Middleborough casino successful: the "physical beauty" of the site's bucolic surroundings, but also its proximity to big populations of prospective gamblers. It is a 45-minute drive from Boston and Providence and within 1 hour and 40 minutes driving time of 4.4 million people. It also provided evidence that Massachusetts residents now significantly patronize Foxwoods (30 percent of that casino's customers); Mohegan Sun (20 percent); and Twin Rivers casino in Rhode Island (35 percent).

The plan calls Cape Cod "one of America's leading vacation destinations" and suggests the casino "will draw patrons from throughout the United States who will be drawn by the prospect of both the quaint Cape Cod atmosphere and its National Seashore, as well as by the amenities" offered at the casino and resort. Middleborough is about a 20-minute drive to Cape Cod on Interstate 495 and Route 25.

Additional features include a hotel of 750 to 1,500 rooms; eight to 10 restaurants; an "entertainment venue" of 5,000 to 10,000 seats; a spa, golf course, and water park; and "attractions celebrating Native American [particularly Wampanoag] history and culture." It also would contain about 80,000 square feet of convention space. By comparison, the main hall of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center is 516,000 square feet. Altogether, the Boston facility has almost 1 million square feet of space.

Casino foes worried about its size. "It will dominate the town," said Jacquie Tolosko of Middleborough. "We will not have a town anymore. I don't think people in town understand the magnitude of the casino planned there."

But Joseph F. Freitas Jr., a casino proponent, said the wooded area where the casino is planned "is an almost perfect site." He said the developers have purchased nearly a square mile of land to help buffer the impact of the casino on the town.

"The impact will be minimal," he said, while the town will receive a guaranteed $7 million annual contribution in lieu of taxes, plus infrastructure improvements and thousands of new jobs.

Globe correspondent Christine Wallgren and Elizabeth Grillo of the Globe staff contributed to this report.