Tensions, nerves frayed in the final days??New York’s casino siting commission and state gaming commissioners are expected to announce the winners of four new Class III casino licenses before the end of October. Three upstate areas are in the running: the Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountains; the Southern Tier; and the Capital Region. The casino projects are as follows:?
• Caesars New York in Woodbury, Orange County. Caesars Entertainment.
• Sterling Forest Resort in Tuxedo, Orange County. Genting Americas.
• Resorts World Hudson Valley in Montgomery, Orange County. Genting Americas.
• The Live! Hotel and Casino in South Blooming Grove, Orange County. Cordish Companies and Penn National Gaming.
• Hudson Valley Casino & Resort in Newburgh, Orange County. Saratoga Casino and Raceway and Rush Street Gaming.
• Grand Hudson Resort & Casino in New Windsor, Orange County. Greenetrack.
• Montreign Resort Casino in Thompson, Sullivan County. Empire Resorts.
• Mohegan Sun at the Concord in Thompson, Sullivan County. Concord Kiamesha LLC and Mohegan Gaming NY.
• Nevele Resort, Casino & Spa, Ellenville in Ulster County. Nevele.
• Rivers Casino & Resort at Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady, Schenectady County. Capital Region Gaming.
• Howe Caverns Resort & Casino in Howes Cave, Schoharie County. Howe Caves Development.
• Hard Rock in Rensselaer, Rensselaer County. Hard Rock International.
• Capital View Casino & Resort in East Greenbush, Rensselaer County. Saratoga Casino and Raceway and Churchill Downs.
• Tioga Downs Casino in Nichols, Tioga County. Tioga Downs Racetrack.
• Traditions Resort & Casino in Johnson City, Broome County. Traditions Resort & Casino.
•Lago Resort & Casino in Tyre, Seneca County. Wilmorite.
?“Which Capital Region community will have its streets paved in gold and all its problems solved?” asked Chris Churchill of the Albany Times-Union. “We’re like kids waiting for Christmas morning, only we don’t know when the holiday will arrive.”
For many, the prospect of winning?or losing?new jobs and economic development is no laughing matter. In recent weeks, Newburgh Mayor Judy L. Kennedy pleaded for a casino in her town to “provide 2,800 jobs for people who desperately need work, and change the destiny of the valley.
“If we can pull this city out of the hole,” said Kennedy, “we can pull up the whole mid-Hudson region.”?
Leonard Distel, supervisor of the town of Wawarsing, echoed that sentiment in a letter to a local newspaper. He pointed out that his community has a “staggeringly high 18 percent unemployment rate…. We want and need the Nevele Casino!”??
The Hudson Valley/Catskills area is the most crowded, with a total of nine bidders, reported the Ithaca Journal. Six bidders are clustered in Orange County, which is closest to the New York City metro area. That proximity to a massive population base has sparked outrage from other bidders, who say their projects could be upstaged by a casino near the Big Apple.??
Westchester County and Bronx politicians are urging the state gaming commission to reject proposals for a full-scale casino in Orange County, just an hour away from Empire City racino in Yonkers, the Greenburgh Daily Voice reported.??
Indian gaming enterprises and racinos in the state are also concerned that new commercial casinos may steal some of their thunder. According to the Rome Sentinel, that city’s chamber of commerce is fighting the proposed Lago Resort & Casino in Tyre, fearing it would siphon business from both the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona and the Vernon Downs racino.??
“We see a threat to our city and region and cannot remain silent,” said a statement from chamber Chairwoman Carol A. Manuele and President William K. Guglielmo. “A string of casinos along upstate exit ramps will dilute, not increase, overall profits from gaming for New York state.”??
Mount Vernon Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow, who chairs the Assembly’s Racing and Wagering Committee and coauthored the bill that was written into law, reminded the public and the decision-makers that the “spirit of the law” was to uplift communities in need of economic development. “We wanted to develop Sullivan and Ulster County the best we could,” he said. “This was meant to promote economic development in hard-pressed areas. Orange County does not fall into that area.”??
Meanwhile, the influential Harriman family, descendants of railroad baron E.H. Harriman, has rejected a $2 million offer from Caesars Entertainment to drop its opposition to its casino near Sterling Forest.??
David Flaum, the Rochester developer who is Caesars’ partner in the casino project, told the New York Times the Harrimans are “trying to kill more than 2,000 jobs in the Woodbury community. They’re trying to stop the Woodbury community from getting $40 million a year in tax revenue and hosting fees.” And Jan Jones Blackhurst, an executive vice president for Caesars, called the campaign “simply noise from those who will say or do anything to oppose a casino under any circumstances.”??
Unions are having their say as well. The Hotel Trades Union is trying to have the Traditions project scratched from casino race because of its failure to secure a labor peace agreement, the Times-Union reported.??
“We were blown away,” said John Hussar of Traditions. He said the team’s lawyer had been trying to negotiate a labor peace agreement for weeks.
??In a letter, Traditions’ managing partner William Walsh wrote to the commission’s members, “Traditions Resort and all of the companies my family operate are labor-friendly. We value our employees. We pay them an above average wage in our community, well above the New York State minimum. We provide health care and other benefits as well as encourage an open dialogue between management and labor. Should our employees wish to organize, it would be one of the easiest units to manage as we probably already exceed any of their anticipated requests during contract negotiations.”
??UNITE HERE, which represents hotel, casino and airport employees, is targeting Rush Street Gaming. In a new commercial, a restaurant server from Rush Street’s Pittsburgh casino blasted Rush Street’s record with unions.??
“There are casino companies right here in our state who offer good wages and benefits, and they don’t fight workers who want to union,” the worker says in the ad. “I just wish I worked for one of those other companies.”??
Gaming Commission Executive Director Robert Williams said the all-volunteer Gaming Facility Location Board is still poring over hundreds of thousands of pages of information in the formal applications, plus more than 5,000 comments from the public.??
“It’s not one of the best jobs in New York state government,” Williams said. He added that the evaluation period should be drawing to an end soon. “If they need additional time, they’ll take whatever is necessary in order to appropriately evaluate each application.”??
An additional three casinos may be built in the New York City area in seven years.
Meanwhile, Greenetrack CEO Luther Winn, one of 16 bidders currently vying for a New York state casino license, is “an accused tax deadbeat,” according to a report last week in the New York Post.??
The newspaper reported that the tax man is after Winn, a good friend of Al Sharpton and the lead partner in a bid to develop the 140-acre Grand Hudson casino resort near Stewart Airport in Orange County, New York.??
Alabama authorities say Winn owes $72 million in unpaid sales taxes for Greenetrack, a bingo casino in the state. Winn is fighting liens first issued in 2009, claiming the charges against him are baseless.??
Greenetrack spokeswoman Juanita Scarlett told the Post the dispute was disclosed in Winn’s application to the New York casino siting commission. She added that the Orange County project “is fully financed,” with $500 million in financing from investors.??
State officials did not question Greenetrack about the tax liens during last month’s public presentation, a transcript of the session revealed.??
A number of influential black politicians in the Empire State support Winn’s casino proposal, including former Governor and current state Democratic Party Chairman David Paterson, and Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel, who’s had his own well-publicized tax problems.??
Dubbed a “legendary tax cheat” by the Village Voice, Rangel got in hot water in 2009 when he failed to report rental income on a plush resort he owns in the Dominican Republic. Rangel claimed he was unaware of income from the resort, where some rooms go for $500 a night. He then blamed his failure to pay taxes on the language barrier. “Every time I thought I was getting somewhere,” he explained, “they started speaking Spanish.”
