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Destroyed Day Care Center Gets Donation From Casino Co.

The operators of a day care center destroyed in last months  natural gas explosion in Springfield Massachusetts have received a grant from a casino developer.  WAMC”s Paul Tuthill reports

Penn National Gaming and a charitable foundation associated with Springfield businessman Peter Picknelly donated $25,000 to Square One. One of t he organization’s pre-schools was destroyed in the November 23 gas explosion in downtown Springfield. Square One CEO Joan Kagen said the donation will help cover expenses to re-locate 100 children to other daycare.

Penn and Picknelly are partners in a proposed $810 million downtown casino project.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.