The Everett Encore

I’m striking a deal with a man, white, drunk, about 50, with three massive pimples on his nose. Maybe they’re warts. His shirt has a graphic of three black rappers surrounding a Mercedes E-Class set on fire.

If we give you our last $25, will you double our money?

I’ll do you one better. You two are my good luck charms.

He pulls out a ratty wallet stacked with cash. There’s at least a couple of grand in there.

Here’s 300. Let’s just play with this instead.

The Everett Encore rises out of an industrial wasteland about 25 minutes north of Boston’s downtown.

27 stories of gold can be seen from almost any vantage point in the city. It is perhaps the most magnificent and the most paradoxical of Boston’s structures. A shrine to sins placed on puritan soil.

The casino and hotel, operated by Wynn Resorts of Vegas and Macau, stretches from the foot of the Mystic River, up about 5 miles into the city of Everett. It encompasses an expansive driveway, harbor walk, pavilion, conference center, shopping center, five restaurants including Rare Steakhouse, Seamark, and a Dunkin, and a 2-floor 210,000 sq ft casino equipped with 2,700 slot machines and high stakes poker, blackjack, craps, roulette, and baccarat tables, as well as an assortment of Chinese games.

Monica and I are en route. We’ve just passed the old candy factory, Schrafft’s, that now leases office spaces with exposed brick. We are close. We are excited. It is 10pm on a Saturday night and we live in a world of possibilities. Both of us are in tight black dresses and both of us are desperately bored.

We cross the bridge over the river and are greeted by a large wind turbine. To the right is a sprawling empty parking lot enclosed with barbed wire. To the left, the campus rises, enshrined in light. It is lush and green despite it being the middle of February. The ground-floor buildings are painted in cream, untouched and unharmed by the eight Boston winters they’ve endured.

The whole thing looks as though it were simply plucked out of the Vegas strip, and placed on this plot of Massachusetts land, formally known as Chemical Lane, now named Horizon Way.

The doorman greets us as we get out of our Uber driver’s Toyota Corolla. Three mediocre guys in navy slacks check us out. We beam. Inside the lobby is the Wynn’s signature floral carousel and garden of earthly delights. We take a few selfies in the large mirrors that adorn either side. Two older couples are standing, both women are in ill-fitting bedazzled ball gowns. One has terrible platinum extensions. Their husbands look almost identical. Beer bellies, bald, in tight, cheap button-downs, carrying to-go bags from the steakhouse.

We get in line for the security check at the entrance of the casino. There are a lot of young kids in front of us. One guy is grabbing the Juicy Couture-clad ass of his girlfriend.

Enjoy your night, ladies.

We put our IDs away.

The casino is red all over. Red chandeliers, red carpets, Red8, the Chinese restaurant imported from Vegas. There is a cart where older Chinese couples in Versace sweatsuits wait in line for lemon tea. Older men with serious faces and wire-rimmed glasses play at a row of Pai Gow tables. 45% of Wynn Resorts’ revenues come from Macau, where it operates two resort-casinos under licenses granted from the People’s Republic of China.

Most of the casino though, is filled with Massachusetts and New England locals. There is a large contingent of blue-collar middle-aged white men, Patriots fans feeding $20 bills into slot machines. There are elderly women with fried hair playing loud games, sipping Diet Cokes out of their Coach bags. Middle managers stand and drink in groups of twos and threes in the 180-degree TV screen sports bar. There are packs of Brazilian guys in fake Gucci belts and tight jeans, and Haitian guys hovering over blackjack tables. Younger guys, fresh out of college, usually in gaggles, are dressed in matching pants and polos and Bruins caps. They are all a step away from being attractive but there is always something wrong, a cheek, a nose, a mustache that’s not quite right.

We do a few laps and are not approached. Unlike Vegas, the men are unconcerned with our presence. They are here to drink beer, to play, and to forget.

86% of Everett’s local community voted in favor of a casino in 2013. Encore was welcomed with open arms.

Chemical plants and factories supported Everett’s fair amount of industrial success throughout the 20th century, employing a mainly white Catholic Irish and Italian base. But as deindustrialization and stagnation took hold in the latter half of the century, the town emptied out. Latin and Central American immigrants moved in, attracted by low rents, but were met with no real economy to support them and land degraded by years of chemical dumping. The Mystic River itself had turned orange and viscous from ungodly levels of arsenic and mercury and the land on which Encore now sits, Chemical Lane, was deemed irreparable by a federal judge.

In 2009, the land was sold to FBT Realty in a last-ditch effort for $8M and was then, scooped by Steve Wynn, of Wynn Resorts, in 2015 for $35M, about $1M per acre, a reduction of 47% from the initial asking price due to FBT’s criminal ties.

Monica and I pull $100 out of the ATM machine and go up to the bar in the center of the casino. One of the bartenders is cute. He is dark, Puerto Rican, fit and perfectly shaved, with a tattoo peeking out of his collar. Monica orders a gin martini. I get a club soda. We giggle, we flirt, she leaves her number on a napkin and whispers in my ear that she’d go home with him.

Not long after the Encore’s opening in 2019, I spent four nights in the hotel with my college boyfriend. It was a mature trip for two college students, but he could count cards, and I was in love with the idea of Vegas.

We had sex on luxe Frette sheets, drank lychee martinis, and ate tuna crispy rice. We’d walk out onto the harbor, look at the abandoned factories, the Costco, the river in front of us, that had been gutted of 41,000 tons of sediment and capped with 30,000 tons of sand.

I had a raging migraine our entire stay there.

Since its opening, the Encore has generated about $4B, with $1B paid in state taxes and $330M in fees to Everett. The casino has employed 5,000 people with a payroll of about $170M.

Everett’s poverty rate has risen to nearly 1 in 7, up from 1 in 10 in the last decade. Rents have increased 110% in the same period, while wages have struggled to keep up pace.

In 2022, Wynn Resorts sold the physical real estate to the Realty Income Corporation of San Diego for $1.7B, but continued to operate the campus. After the resignation of Steve Wynn on account of rape and sexual misconduct allegations, institutional firms such as Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity, and State Street took hold of a majority of the company.

A Wynn subsidiary filed a legal notice acknowledging that toxins and metals remained beneath the sand cap in the Mystic River. The notice listed phthalates, petroleum hydrocarbons, acenaphthene, benzo(a)pyrene, chrysene, fluorene, and other toxic chemicals.

We take the $300 and put it on a green spot on the craps table closest to us.

The dice rolls, the man cheers. We’ve doubled our money.

I look at Monica. She shoves the chips into her purse.

You two are my good luck charms! Let’s get espresso martinis. Where’s the bar?

It’s right behind you.

We walk over with him. He starts explaining, in slurred speech, that he’s here for a friend’s birthday. A big real estate guy who’s made most of his money in the surrounding area. They’re all wearing matching t-shirts. We see no one who fits the description.

He spits as he talks. My skin curls.

I need to pee. Monica come with me. We’ll be right back.

We run over to the cashier. There’s a long line.

He won’t see us, he’s trashed.

We wait, not talking. I have another headache. We cash out, split it, and look for the exit.

Let’s get the fuck out of here.

Love,
Nikole