page_title: Encore Boston Harbor
section_title: Background and owners (1800s-2010s)
hierarchical_section_title: Encore Boston Harbor / History / Background and owners (1800s-2010s)
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view of the Mystic River in November 2015. The Amelia Earhart Dam and the Newburyport/Rockport Line bridge are at top left, site clearing for the Wynn Everett casino and the Gateway Center at top, the remains of the Charlestown Elevated bridge next to the Alford Street bridge at lower right, and the MBTA's Charlestown and Somerville garages at bottom.
context_page_description: Encore Boston Harbor is a luxury resort and casino located in Everett, Massachusetts, and owned by Wynn Resorts. The resort is in a commercial-industrial area on the Mystic River, about 5 miles from downtown Boston. Its development rehabilitated a 33-acre parcel of land previously used for industrial purposes. It opened on June 23, 2019, at a total cost of $2.6 billion. After a remediation process to clean the site, Wynn Resorts constructed an integrated resort with a hotel, a harborwalk, restaurants, a casino, spa, retail outlets, and meeting and convention space. Public amenities of the year-round harborwalk include a picnic park, paths for bikers and pedestrians, viewing decks, waterfront dining and retail, a performance lawn, floral displays, boat docks, and public art.
context_section_description: In January 2015, Wynn Resorts purchased 33 acres (13 ha) of land along the Mystic River in Everett, Massachusetts, and announced plans to build the resort-casino Wynn Everett on the plot. With the project later renamed Wynn Boston Harbor, around 30 of those acres had previously been set aside for industrial use and were inaccessible to the public for more than 100 years. A section of the plot had been known as White Island in the 1800s, with the island later becoming part of the mainland as backfill expanded the shoreline along the Mystic River. Prior to any backfill, as early as 1804 a dye house had been built on the land, which was later occupied by Cochrane Chemical Company.
  Using a corner of White Island, in 1854 the Mystic River Bridge was built across the river. New England Chemical started a plant on the site in 1868, before going out of business in 1872. That year Cochrane Chemical Company purchased a portion of the plot adjacent to New England Chemical's former factory, with the Cochrane factory experiencing heavy use during World War I. The land was acquired by Merrimac Chemical Company in 1917. It became an industrial center used by Monsanto starting in 1929, with Monsanto selling the parcel to Boston Edison in 1983. Boston Edison retained the land until 1995, when the land and easements were purchased by O'Donnell Sand & Gravel. Afterwards ownership of the parcel was ceded to Rosen Construction Ventures in Florida. The site was subsequently primed for development, undergoing several other changes in ownership.
caption: Aerial view of the Mystic River in November 2015. The undeveloped parcel in the upper-center of the image, between the railroad bridge (left) and the windmill (right), was used for industrial purposes in the 1800s,[4] before being purchased for the casino in January 2015.[6]
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