Many Manhattanites relish the opening of a new restaurant, piano bar, or the arrival of a new play. But according to lawmakers, Manhattan has little or no support for a casino in town, no matter how opulent.
When talking about the casinos downstate in New York, the subject of Manhattan always comes up. It’s discussed as a given. Manhattan casino? No brainer. Gaming operators, developers and hedge fund behemoths are going all in. Several sites in Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Nassau County have been floated as potential locations for a new casino, but the promised land to gaming industry veterans remains Manhattan, according to the Commercial Observer.
Not so fast. Those entrusted with such decisions offer a resounding no, much to the chagrin of property owners and casino operators.
New York law allows for three casinos downstate, but two licenses will almost certainly go to existing casinos in Yonkers and Queens. The Genting Group, which owns Resorts World Casino and Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens, and opened a Hyatt Regency hotel on its site last August, wants to upgrade its “racino” to include table games with live dealers. So does VICI Properties, which acquired Empire City Casino in Yonkers from MGM last year for $17.2 billion. (MGM Resorts International is still operating the casino.)
“The market is going to be huge,” said Marcus Threats, a senior associate with Marcus & Millichap’s hospitality practice. “Think about the close proximity of the number of people with an average income twice the national average. They’re going to come out of the woodwork for this license.”
In early October, the New York State Gaming Commission (NYSGC) will appoint a three-member panel called a Gaming Facility Location Board, which will have 90 days to issue a request for casino license applications.
To move forward, the proposals require four out of six votes from a Community Advisory Council (CAC) made up of appointees of the governor, the mayor, the borough president and the district’s state Assembly, state Senate, and City Council representatives.
“I am not a fan of casinos or gambling; I’ve voted against every gambling bill I’ve seen in Albany,” said state Senator Liz Krueger, whose Manhattan district will include Times Square and Penn Station by January and who will appoint a CAC member. “It’s not obvious to me there’s a path. Many elected officials from Manhattan and many constituents also see no place for a casino in Manhattan.”
Vornado Realty Trust Chairman Steven Roth thinks his properties near Herald Square work well.
“Manhattan has, by far, the largest number of hotel rooms, restaurants, museums, tourist attractions, and the region’s transportation network was designed with Manhattan as its hub,” Roth wrote in a letter to investors in 2021. “We have heard the chatter and have been approached.”
Morris Bailey, who owns Atlantic City’s first casino hotel, is looking into building a casino on the former McAlpin Hotel at Broadway and 34th Street. And L&L Holding Company sees his Times Square tower as appropriate.
SL Green Realty and Hard Rock Cafe met with elected officials to push a
plan to put a casino at 1515 Broadway. Hard Rock has other sites in its sights, according to chairman Jim Allen.
Related Companies discussed Hudson Yards with City Hall.
Meanwhile, other developers are stepping up to plug their sites in the outer boroughs.
Thor Equities’ Joseph Sitt and Red Apple Group CEO John Catsimatidis earmarked the Coney Island waterfront. Mets owner Steve Cohen is pitching the Citi Field parking lot or Willets Point.
Don’t bet your house that Manhattan gets the lucky license.
Other opponents include Borough President Mark Levine, City Councilman Erik Bottcher, state Senator Brad Hoylman, and U.S. Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney. Entertainment and civic institutions, including the Broadway League and the Times Square Alliance, and several business owners also say no dice.
“I haven’t heard from any constituents who want a casino,” Hoylman said. “We know that poor and vulnerable New Yorkers are often targeted by casinos. They add traffic, noise and congestion, and they affect the quality of life.”
Krueger said she has been turned off by the intense pressure from gaming industry lobbyists who have demanded tax breaks when their revenues fall short of their forecasts.
Cohen’s lobbyists have also met with Queens elected officials, including Borough President Donovan Richards and state Senator Jessica Ramos. Richards told the New York Post he wants to see “investment and job development” in the Willets Point area in any proposal. Both told the Post they had not seen any plans yet.
A Queens- or Brooklyn-based proposal would also likely have the tacit backing of the powerful Hotel Trades Council, which lobbied Albany for months to issue new casino licenses.
The mayor leans towards Queens, a site that would allow him to build on his legacy, with a project that includes a soccer stadium, hotel and convention center.
In other New York news, Jeff Gural owns a Tioga Downs casino, one of four in northern New York. Located in an economically depressed area makes it harder to earn a fortune, said Gural, who also owns Meadowlands Racetrack. He has two goals: opening a casino downstate that is in or near New York City. The other is opening a casino at the Meadowlands in conjunction with Hard Rock.
Hard to say which will be more difficult to bring to fruition.
In New York, the three licenses available are really one. There is “no way in the world,” Gural asserted, that New York gaming regulators will decline to approve licenses to upgrade Aqueduct Racetrack and Yonkers Raceway from their current slot machine-centric racinos to full-fledged casinos with live-dealer table games and sports betting.
As for New Jersey, Gural spearheaded the referendum in 2016 to approve a casino in the Meadowlands with Hard Rock. The measure lost by a 4 to 1 vote. Atlantic City has a powerful pull.
Faced with the realities, Gural has elected to stay on the sidelines and watch others duke it out in New York. Like so many others, he believes Manhattan will not allow a casino in its boundaries.
“Our strategy is just to wait,” he told a conference in Saratoga Springs on August 16.
Gural said that “the Supreme Court saved us” in 2018, when the court ruled in favor of New Jersey’s suit to overturn the sports gambling ban.
“We’d be out of business, and now we’re profitable,” said Gural, who has a lucrative partnership with daily fantasy sports giant FanDuel to provide sports betting both at the East Rutherford track and online. “I’m not under any pressure anymore.”
“It’s almost impossible to find a location where people want a casino, other than [at Aqueduct and Yonkers, where gambling has been offered for generations],” Gural said.
So who will get the coveted third license?
“I make Citi Field the favorite, unless they screw it up totally,” Gural said of a reported bid by Cohen to seek a casino license next to his ballpark.
Gural was far more eager to see a Meadowlands casino get approved back in 2016, when he bankrolled a campaign for passage of a statewide referendum to allow for two new casino licenses in North Jersey.
“I learned a lot from the failure of that referendum,” said Gural, adding that in retrospect, he believes some elected officials “were just doing me a favor to shut me up, basically” by getting the concept on the ballot.
If Yonkers and Aqueduct attract North Jersey residents, it might be enough to get lawmakers to push for a casino in the Meadowlands.
“You have to limit where you could put a casino; it has to be specifically for the Meadowlands [Sports Complex],” Gural said of a future ballot question.
There will be no casino referendum this fall, and Gural said that these days, he seems to be the only advocate for it—at the moment, at least.
Asked by NJ Online Gambling after the panel discussion whether the Meadowlands Racetrack’s future was ever in severe peril, he said it didn’t quite get to that point. While the track began to become less and less profitable in 2014-16, the Supreme Court’s announcement in June 2017 that it would take up the sports betting case—in spite of a contrary recommendation from the office of the U.S. Solicitor General—left Gural convinced it was just a matter of time before sports betting would arrive at his track.
And none too soon, Gural added, given the Covid-19 pandemic that caused such an upheaval starting in March 2020.
“The pandemic really hurt [business], because it forced people to stay home and bet on their phone,” Gural said. “And they said, ‘Wow, this is a lot easier than coming to the racetrack.’”
