Everett ‘entertainment district’ could follow Encore Boston Harbor opening

Sunday’s grand opening of the 3 million-square-foot, 33-acre Encore Boston Harbor casino-resort on the banks of the Mystic River in Everett could presage an even larger entertainment district there, according to Matt Maddox, the chief executive of Encore Boston Harbor developer Wynn Resorts.

In particular, the Las Vegas-based company is looking at the partially decommissioned power plant across the Mystic from the Encore Boston Harbor, per the Business Journal’s Catherine Carlock. “We’re paying careful attention to it,” Maddox said Friday.

Wynn Resorts already owns 11 acres, comprising 82 parcels, around the casino-resort site. The company is holding those for potential redevelopment options, something it has been quite open about. There are dozens of additional develop-able acres beyond those 11.

The City of Everett itself got full-speed behind Encore Boston Harbor, and the casino-resort occupies space that a Monsanto chemical manufacturing plant once occupied (and left contaminated). So a buildup and buildout of a kind of Everett-based “entertainment district”—Maddox’s words—does not seem so far-fetched. Stay tuned.