Foxwoods Resort Casino located in New England, United States looks set to complete a move in resolution of a debt crisis which had reached an astonishing $2.3 billion. This repayment of debt would be facilitated by the completion of restructuring of the Casino’s current practices.
One such method of recouping costs has been to attract interstate customers from outside New England with the enticement of new shopping malls. Despite these efforts, the tribal owners of Foxwoods are still managing to incur more debt from their unfruitful spending. Director of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Center for Policy Analysis stated that he believes this is following the exact same path that pushed the casino towards debt
“This is a long-standing business strategy, to keep adding,” Barrow said. “Foxwoods definitely needs to find a niche.”
Competing casino with Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun has seemingly fared much better in comparison to the latter, after opening four years ago. Barrow mentioned that it has done a much better job of making itself more defined, citing research that was published by the center earlier this year that had included the views and attitudes of casino patrons.
The analyst Barrows made comparisons between Foxwoods and a large, well-known Minnesota shopping center that is also struggling to keep afloat after being in operation for 20 years. Foxwoods has also been operating for the past 20 years.
“What people like about Mohegan Sun is that it is compact, that you can move around easily and that it has an atmosphere of an Indian casino with all the sights and smells,” Barrow said. “Foxwoods could be the Mall of America.”
Recently the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal National-owned Foxwoods celebrated their 20th anniversary with the unveiling of an advertising campaign which featured the details for production of a planned luxury shopping mall. The president and CEO Scott Butera had also promised that there would be ‘spectacular’ results.
Butera also announced on April 19 that Foxwoods had completed negations towards debt restructuring, though declined to provide an estimate on the announcement of completion, citing confidentiality agreements between Foxwoods and lenders.
Barrow had previously stated that Creditors need be anxious about getting the word out on the settlement, such as the Bank of America Corp. When the settlement is completed it will push up the value of Foxwoods’ assets as well as stock prices. The price of Bank of America’s shares has also seen a rise of 30 percent this year.
The Mohegan Sun is also in the process of restructuring $1 billion in debt.
“Because of customer confidentiality we cannot comment,” said Shirley Norton, a spokeswoman for North Carolina-based Bank of America
Foxwoods spokesperson Hud Englehart also declined on various aspects of estimated completion.
“We will have something when the deal is signed and sealed,” Englehart wrote in an email. “Can’t estimate when that might be yet.”
Source: Norwich Bulletin
