This time around, foundation president Bradley Campbell pushed the quiet negotiations into the public eye on Thursday with a critique on CommonWealth Magazine’s website. The Conservation Law Foundation objected to the Everett language last year, calling the maneuver a rush job without adequate public scrutiny aimed at benefiting the Kraft Group, which owns the Revs soccer team. While the new language is still being refined, representatives for the city say they’re not looking to avoid the Chapter 91 review this time, in part to address previous concerns raised by environmentalists, and are mainly focused on removing the site from the DPA. The House bill last year would have removed the Everett parcel from the DPA while also bypassing restrictions for tidelands regulated under a law geared at ensuring public waterfront access, known as Chapter 91.

There are two ways around such a restriction: removing a site from the DPA via the Legislature, or pursuing a boundary review with the state Office of Coastal Zone Management, an uncertain process that can last two or more years. Unfortunately for Wynn and Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria’s administration, the 45 acres sit within a Designated Port Area - a state-regulated zone designed to protect working ports from gentrification. (Constellation still operates a remaining portion of the Mystic power plant next door, but that will close in mid-2024.)

Wynn Resorts, which operates the casino, bought the power-plant site in March for $25 million from Constellation Energy. The property in question: a roughly 45-acre site on the Mystic River across Route 99 from the Encore casino. Now, proponents are hoping to try again with a goal of resolving the years-long search for a new home for the Revs so the team could move from Gillette Stadium in Foxborough to a purpose-built soccer stadium in the urban core of Greater Boston. But the Senate did not agree, and the attempt fizzled.

Last summer, the House of Representatives approved language in a broad-reaching economic development bill that would lift the industrial restrictions for this property.

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