The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Encore excels in service, art
Pricey casino brings luxury, scenery to site north of Boston
As you drive up to the new Encore Boston Harbor over the city line into Everett, Mass., the right side of the street is all industrial gray, brick, concrete, pipes and smokestacks from the likes of a sewage treatment plant and Mass Electric.
But on the left, in a contrast like few other places in the Northeast, sits the curved modern beauty of a $2.5 billion resort and casino that is Wynn Resorts’ only American casino outside Las Vegas (and a risky bet it is in an increasingly crowded Northeast market where gambling revenues often are not meeting projections). The resort opened to fanfare in late June as the only full casino in the Boston area.
Uhhuh. But is it worth a day or weekend trip for Connecticut residents? We took the twoplushour drive recently to find out, and the results surprised us a bit.
Accustomed to the vast spread of Foxwoods, the sneakyhuge and versatile Mohegan Sun and even
the newish downtown casino MGM Springfield, we still marveled at the marble, artwork, color and pricey touches of Encore Boston Harbor.
Living colors, lavish furnishings, giant hotel rooms, custom red chandeliers, a huge salon and fitness area and showy architectural flourishes — this is luxury wholly grafted from Vegas roots. It’s like Mass Vegas, as another writer put it.
In the lobby sits a 15,000pound Preston Bailey carousel made of 83,000 “permanent botanicals” (preserved flowers) and 11,000 jewels, with 10 mythical creatures that — don’t bring the kids — you cannot ride. It’s also framed by two lovely, curved escalators and surrounded by live flowers and plants, which brings us beyond the bling to a genuine wow — the horticulture.
“All the flowers you see on the property are real,” said Encore official Beth Gibbons during a property tour. “We take care of them every day to make sure they’re in the best condition possible.”
Not only were workers carefully replacing flowers and green plants in the floor display around the carousel (changing over to the fall color palette), but outside a gardener said he was replacing marigolds along the beautiful harborwalk near the resort’s inlet of the Mystic River on this latesummer day even though they would all be replaced with mums (for the fall palette) in a week or so.
The grounds, highlighted by the harborwalk, aren’t vast but they’re attractive, welllandscaped and calming. Pretty good for the site of a former chemical plant site that had to be cleaned up to a price tag of $68 million. An adjacent lawn (with artificial turf ) serves also as a sixacre public park and occasional location of a beer garden, noncontact boxing class and picnicking, an official said.
“We have had so many people from the area come and thank us for how beautiful we’ve made it,” said Gibbons of the resort.
She said there are 40 people in the Horticulture Department led by Director Patrick Chadwick, who has carefully selected flowers and plants that will survive and thrive in the New England weather. There are good photo angles outside.
“Our director of horticulture ... said he looked at this from every single angle possible,” said Gibbons.
Down from the lobby of the hotel is an alcove holding a 6foot, 5inch stainless steel Popeye sculpture by Jeff Koons that Steve Wynn (the sincedisplaced casino magnate accused of sexual misconduct) purchased for an incredible $28 million. It may be lowbrow art but hey, it’s a nautical theme, right?
There is art spread throughout the property, from a 3,000pound Viola Frey Amphora IV vase at the base of the escalators (formerly in the Vegas Bellagio) to Art Deco panels on a lobby wall that came from elevator doors at the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio, to paintings and objects in the 671 hotel rooms and the posh salon.
“Art is a very big part of Wynn properties,” said Gibbons.
Back outside on the harborwalk amid the flowers sit three huge, proudly beautiful stainless steel heads of women fashioned by Spanishborn artist Jaume Plensa. Two look toward the Boston skyline, one back at the hotel.
Nearby is a water taxi at Encore’s dock that for $12 takes you to the Seaport or Long Wharf.
Among the restuarants are an oyster bar, the pub Waterfront with local and regional beers (Stony Creek, too!), an Asian food place called Mystique, Fratelli (with cooks from Boston’s North End) and the highend steakhouse Rare (New York Strip: $67).
We tried the Garden Cafe, which sits on the mezzanine overlooking the lobby, and Sinatra, an Italian place with a posh look and portraits of Ol’ Blue Eyes on the walls. Both places featured exquisite service and bigcity prices. The cafe’s Eggs Benedict ($22) were good but without gourmet flourishes; the Garden Breakfast ($27) did include coffee and a basket of pastries to go with the eggs and potatoes.
At Sinatra, led by Executive Chef TJ Ricciardi, we tried Frank’s favorite dish, the homemade spaghetti and clams ($34), which was very good even though it was in a red sauce. A veal osso bucco dish (braised veal shank, summer corn cake and wild mushroom sugo, $53,) was excellent, too, as was the appetizer Gnudi ($22), which is ricotta dumplings, crisp chicken oyster, olive conserva and chive butter sauce. All the while, you could enjoy Sinatra’s tunes, at least until it became so crowded that the noise level downed them out.
Asked about the upscale dining and features, Gibbons mentioned a coffee shop Bru as having a lower price point but said, “We have a lot of customers that are coming from all over the world that are Wynn loyalists, and so we try to keep it at a standard.”
In other words, it should be a treat but your wallet will get a workout.
There are Wynn and Encore casinos in Las Vegas. An attentive employee in the hotel area said she came over from the Vegas Encore and the Boston one seems smallish to her.
Shows and crowd flow
We don’t want to fixate on comparisons to Connecticut casinos, but MGM and Encore simply don’t compare in terms of entertainment options.
MGM is working at that but Encore will have to ramp up enough entertainment shows and venues to be known for more than gambling, posh rooms and gourmet food. Right now, the shows are occasional and held in the 50,000squarefoot ballroom/convention area, including (so far) boxing events, Tony Bennett and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The idea of not having inside arenas or 3,000seat theaters, said Gibbons, is that nearby Boston has a lot of that, which would be difficult to compete with.
Gamingwise, Encore features more floor space and slots than the Encore and Wynn casinos in Vegas combined, said Gibbons, citing the fact that it’s the only casino in Boston. The Encore hotel, however, is much smaller than those casinos.
But there’s nothing else small about the hotel; At 650 square feet, Encore Boston’s Premier guest rooms ($227 and up) are the largest standard hotel accommodations in New England, says Wynn. Signature Suites ($600 and up) come in at 1,350 square feet; there are 18 TwoBedroom Residences at 3,350 square feet ($5,000) and two villas at 5,800 square feet (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).
That’s pricey but you get luxury bedding, cool bath amenities, a very functional bedside iPad and mobilecharging device, Alexa voiceactivated controlled lights, curtains, heating and airconditioning, dual sinks, soaking tub and shower, 24inch flatscreen HDTV in the bathroom, robes and slippers.
The spa facility was relaxing and posh, with a carpeted locker room, private showers, sauna and a wet room with whirlpool, cold plunge and heated/ tiled chase lounges ($48 for access, massages from $210 and facials from $235).
Parking at the resort is tricky. Selfparking is $22 for under six hours and $42 overnight, but you can get free parking weekdays by showing a Red Card (Wynn rewards) or paying with one comp dollar from gaming on weekends or at the valet. Offficials are still revising parking rules to see what works best, we hear.
Encore Boston’s prices may discourage the average slot player from visiting a lot (and the road routes can be Bostoncrazy), but the level of service is superb; it will draw international visitors and conventions, for sure. We’ll see about local and regional business. Encore is definitely worth a visit on a weekday or via bus just to see it, especially in goodweather months like these. The rest is up to your pocketbook.
“We have had so many people from the area come and thank us for how beautiful we’ve made it.” Beth Gibbons, Encore official