Wonderland

Wonderland is a closed dog track in Revere, Massachusetts, whose derelict grounds hold traces of an earlier amusement park and whose uncertain ownership becomes part of a larger casino-development struggle. Its importance lies in the collision of those layers: a ruined recreational site is treated as valuable real estate, while its past offers a more imaginative vision for what might replace it.

The Site and Its Two Histories

The property’s identity reaches further back than the dog track. Rick Weinberg describes an original Wonderland amusement park that stood on the same ground before the track was built during the Depression. He dates its heyday to 1907 and 1908, when its design drew on the engravings by John Tenniel for the Alice books. In Weinberg’s account, the park’s fantastical rides included oversized mushrooms, cats that seemed to disappear except for their eyes, and rooms that appeared to shrink as visitors moved through them. He regards this early attraction, rather than the later dog track, as the original Wonderland, and says it inspired Walt Disney.

That history survives in the name, but the present-day grounds offer a stark contrast. Spenser and Zebulon Sixkill walk through a wide, broken parking lot beside a heap of rusted amusement equipment, including parts of a Ferris wheel and bumper cars. The old grandstand looms over the lot. A door bears a sign marking 75 years, but the building itself is rusted and neglected; when Spenser kicks at a padlocked entrance, the old door comes off its hinges.

Inside, the grandstand has been stripped of most fixtures. The walls still show where televisions once served off-track betting, and a red-and-white tiled floor leads toward the seating area. Broken exit doors, the remains of a small fire, boxes, and filthy rags suggest that people have recently sheltered there. Outside, weeds rise waist-high on the muddy track, vines cover the lower seats, and birds nest in the rafters. The setting registers not as an operating venue but as a structure overtaken by neglect and growth.

Ownership and Casino Prospects

The property’s apparent abandonment does not make it commercially irrelevant. In a discussion of Massachusetts casino licensing, Wayne Cosgrove explains that casino companies lobby for legislation in hopes of receiving a license if the law passes. Securing land in Revere, he says, would be a major step. He describes a four-person licensing board made up of the governor, the secretary of state, the speaker of the house, and a fourth member to be selected once the board convenes. In that context, the old track appears to Spenser to be a possible piece of a larger development plan.

The ownership trail initially obscures who controls the site. Spenser says the property records lead through layers of corporate names and list the property as being in bankruptcy. Lennie Seltzer later tells him that Weinberg acquired the track shortly after it closed. Lennie also speculates that Weinberg may have funded campaigners seeking to protect the dogs, thereby helping ensure the track’s failure; the claim is presented as a possibility, not an established fact. The difference between the opaque public record and Lennie’s account keeps the acquisition’s circumstances uncertain even as Weinberg’s interest in the site becomes clearer.

Weinberg’s Redevelopment Vision

Weinberg’s plans recast Wonderland as more than a convenient parcel for gambling. Rachel Weinberg says the plans include an art wing. Rick Weinberg describes having imagined the project before the gambling law passed and says his designers tried to reproduce the Art Nouveau atmosphere of the original amusement park. He had begun collecting material from that earlier site the previous year and asked the designers to match its décor.

The proposal thus joins two versions of Wonderland: the closed dog track that can anchor a development scheme and the turn-of-the-century amusement park whose distinctive visual language Weinberg wants to revive. His account gives the redevelopment a historical and cultural dimension, though the evidence establishes a plan and a design ambition, not a completed transformation.

A Crime Scene and a Wider Political Struggle

Wonderland also returns as a location of police activity. On a later night, Spenser is taken to the old dog track’s vast parking lot, where state police and local officers from Revere have gathered. Yellow crime-scene tape stretches from the main entrance across the lot; crime-scene vans and television crews are present. The scene makes the property part of an active investigation as well as a proposed development site, though the available account does not itself specify what happened there.

The casino project’s political context widens beyond the property. Cosgrove reports that Weinberg made ordinary political contributions to officials and that, through Envolve Development, he appears to have given nearly half a million dollars to a super-PAC run by the brother of Joseph G. Perrotti. Later, Cosgrove examines papers that appear to show direct payments to Perrotti, some legal and most not, while cautioning that the documents’ claims still need proof. He also identifies two companies making payments as belonging to Gino Fish. These disclosures illuminate the broader contest over casino licensing; they do not, by themselves, establish that any particular payment secured Wonderland or its redevelopment.

Significance

Wonderland concentrates the novel’s contrast between material decay and speculative value. Its empty track, ruined grandstand, and rusted rides testify to a lost public attraction, while casino developers read the same ground as a strategic asset. Weinberg’s proposed art wing attempts to carry the amusement park’s imagery into a new plan, but the property’s opaque records and its appearance in a crime-scene investigation prevent that vision from feeling settled. Wonderland remains at once historical remnant, contested real estate, and a meeting point for commercial ambition and political influence.