The big, bold numbers pervade every element of this project: a 210,000-square-foot casino, 15 dining outlets, 671 guest rooms and suites (including a 5,800-square-foot Presidential Villa), 50,000 square feet of event space, a 450-seat buffet restaurant, and a staff that will eventually number 5,500 (including hundreds of graduates from The Greater Boston Gaming Career Center at Cambridge College, which Encore helped develop in order to cultivate an East Coast casino workforce). Give us a sense of the scope of this place? The first thing to know about Encore Boston Harbor is that it’s not coy about its price tag everything from the press release to its official Instagram handle drops the figure “$2.6 billion” like it ain’t no thing. Inside, a huge carousel-made entirely of silk flowers and crystals-holds court in a light-drenched central atrium with intricate mosaic floors. Park the car in a multi-lane valet operation (trying not to let the neighboring Mercedes Maybach shake your confidence) and four uniformed bellhops descend, NASCAR-pit-crew style, to sweep your luggage away.

Jutting up from a stretch of waterfront that’s sparsely scattered with low-lying buildings and factories, Encore is a 33-acre property where flowers miraculously bloom all year in Massachusetts and no surface is untouched by something gold. If the curved bronze glass looks familiar, that’s because it’s identical to the ritzy Wynn Las Vegas (this is its East Coast sister). What was your first impression? As you drive along I-93, curving your way out of the city, the only way you’d miss Encore Boston Harbor is if you were futzing with CarPlay and not paying attention to the massive building looming in the distance-there’s even an official highway sign trumpeting the brand-new casino-resort.

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