“My goal is to have a Main Street promenade all the way down to our South End area, our Italian-American enclave,” Sarno said.

Three mostly-empty office buildings that were purchased by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority are now being actively marketed. The city is taking steps to try to eliminate blight around the casino. Now that the first quarter of the year benchmarks announced by Hornbuckle have been achieved, there will be additional actions in the coming months including a plan for the large vacant building that had been a retail location for Kringle Candle. “We have not lost contact or faith or ultimately what we believe this opportunity can bring for Springfield and frankly for MGM Resorts,” Hornbuckle said. Those complaints brought MGM Resorts International President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle to Springfield in January where he announced a timetable to return the property to near normal operations. Local officials had said that MGM was not living up to its host community agreement with the city by restricting the non-gambling amenities for so long after the gaming floor reopened in June 2020.

The reopening this week of the Indian Motorcycle 1901 merchandise store on the plaza of the downtown casino campus marked the completion of a series of re-openings and expanded hours of operation at attractions, restaurants, and bars at MGM Springfield that have taken place since January. Officials at the MGM Springfield casino say they’ve kept a promise made to city officials earlier this year to more quickly reopen non-gambling amenities that had remained dark since the pandemic-driven shutdown three years ago.

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