Vornado Realty Trust, New York City’s second-largest commercial landlord, is considering a bid to place a casino near the redeveloped Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.
According to a report in the New York Post, Vornado, which has been developing office sites in a nine-block redevelopment around Penn Station in New York, is considering a casino at the current site of the Hotel Pennsylvania, the shuttered historic hotel that will soon be demolished.
That would put the casino near the famed Madison Square Garden.
“We are studying the possibility of applying for a casino license (near Penn Station), but we have no deal in place,” a Vornado spokesperson told the Post. “Our most important criterion for any project is that it meets the economic development objectives and produces the transit and public improvements set forth in the state’s General Project Plan. We fully support the state’s GPP for the Penn district.”
The Post cited an unnamed source as saying Vornado is in talks with Chicago-based billionaire Neil Bluhm, chairman of Rush Street Gaming, as a possible partner in the project.
Vornado would join an increasingly crowded field of competitors for New York’s three downstate casino licenses. The latest to announce bid was Saks Fifth Avenue, which is proposing a luxury casino for its iconic Manhattan flagship store.
That bid joined SL Green (the city’s largest commercial landlord) and Caesars Entertainment, which are proposing a casino for Times Square; Wynn Resorts, which is proposing a casino at Hudson Yards; Las Vegas Sands Corp., bidding for a casino at the Nassau Coliseum site on Long Island; Thor Equities, with a plan for a casino at Coney Island in Brooklyn, partnering with the New York Yankees; and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen, who wants to place a casino next to the Mets’ Citi Field stadium in Queens.
