The state gambling commission today voted 5-0 to lift the freeze on commercial casino development in Southeastern Massachusetts, and will solicit bids from gambling companies interested in competing for development rights in the region. The freeze had been established by lawmakers to give the Mashpee Wampanoag time to make progress on a tribal casino in the region.  Read full story

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Suffolk Downs, along with the track’s partner, Caesars Entertainment, today offered a partnership program to give local businesses a chance to make some money from the East Boston casino project, should the project win the Greater Boston casino resort license.Meanwhile, out in the Wild West, Hard Rock International has unveiled its traffic plan for the company’s planned casino at the Big E fairgrounds in West Springfield. Hard Rock is planning to spend $35 million to deal with traffic. Read full story

The state gambling commission is bending on its policy that communities must wait to hold referenda on casino projects until the gambling commission completes backgrounds checks on the casino developers. The board is leaning toward a compromise that would allow communities vote while the background checks are ongoing, so long as voters are informed about the purpose and the standards of the commission’s investigations into the applicants. Read full story

Less than a year after it opened, Maine’s Oxford Casino is being sold at a very nice profit. Casino and racetrack owner Churchill Downs is reportedly paying $160 million for the casino on Route 26 in rural Oxford. When I toured the supermarket-sized gambling hall just before it opened in June 2012, the local developers said their initial investment was $52 million. The casino began with a little more than 500 slot machines and a dozen table games, and has since expanded. Read full story

Hopkinton selectmen are swinging for the fences to derail a Foxwoods casino plan in nearby Milford. In a letter today to the state gambling commission, the selectmen seized on a shake-up in the ownership group pushing the Milford project to argue that the proposal is just too sketchy. The board helpfully suggested the commission save everybody a lot of trouble and just kill the project. That’s not going to happen, but the Milford casino proposal has taken a surprising turn. Read full story

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Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria is protesting a state policy that communities must wait to hold referenda on casino projects until the gambling commission completes backgrounds checks on the casino developers. DeMaria, who has been negotiating with Wynn Resorts over a casino on the Mystic River, is pressing told a citywide vote on the project in June. “There is nothing in the gaming law that requires suitability investigations to be one-hundred percent completed prior to an election taking place,” DeMaria wrote. Read full story

The most shocking news this week in the realm of Bay State gambling has to be the unexpected retirement of Plainridge Racecourse President Gary Piontkowski, due to health reasons.Piontkowski had been fighting for the right to add slot machines to Plainridge Racecourse since he founded the Plainville track in 1997. I remember him last year showing me a $400,000 check, made out to the state gambling commission to cover the slot license application fee. Read full story

Not much has gone right for the $2.5 billion Revel casino resort in Atlantic City, which is stumbling into bankruptcy just a year after it opened. But the worst news might be this: the most prominent smoke-free casino in the US plans to reverse its anti-tobacco policy and permit gamblers to fill their lungs—and the air—with cigarette smoke, according to bankruptcy filings. Soon the Revel, too, will have that distinctive cold ashtray odor that permeates the casino industry, a stubborn holdout against the smoke-free revolution. Read full story