Plans also call for many new restaurants and bars, a marketplace, entertainment venue and lounge, banquet room, and day spa
Work on the Rivers Casino & Resort at Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady is well underway with a 2017 opening expected, after a formal groundbreaking ceremony was held earlier this month.
Work on the 60-acre site’s foundation has begun to house the casino, which would have 63 table games, 15 poker tables, 1,150 slot machines, and a 163-room hotel adjacent to the casino.
Plans also call for many new restaurants and bars, a marketplace, entertainment venue and lounge, banquet room, and day spa, as well as lots of green space along the waterfront.
When completed, the casino, which is a joint venture between Rush Street Gaming and the Galesi Group, will employ about 1,200, while its construction will create an estimated 1,400 temporary construction jobs.
While the Schenectady casino is underway, New York’s St. Lawrence County says its share of revenues from the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino came up about $500,000 less than expected.
Local officials anticipated receiving about $3 million in gaming revenues for 2015via a tribal gaming compact, but says it expects to receive about $2.5 million for the year after adding fourth-quarter revenues, which have not been released yet.
The revenue shortfall partly is attributed to a reduction in the comparative value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar reducing the number of gamblers crossing the nearby border to shop and gamble.
With a reduction in Canadian gaming dollars, county officials lowered their anticipated revenue sharing for 2016 to $2.2 million.
