New York City is poised to get its first Vegas-style casinos, including one next to the home stadium of baseball’s New York Mets and another that could see a windfall for President Donald Trump.
They were among three casino proposals approved for lucrative gambling licenses on Monday by a key state panel. No casinos will end up coming to Manhattan, however, as several other competing proposals were already scrapped, including one in the heart of Times Square.
The state Gaming Commission is expected to formally issue the licenses before the end of the year, as the gambling revenues are already factored into the state budget. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said the casinos promise to unlock billions of dollars in funding for the state’s transit system.
Bally’s plan to spend $4 billion building a casino at the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx could mean millions of dollars for Trump. When the company purchased the city-owned golf course’s operating rights from the Trump Organization in 2023, it promised to pony up another $115 million if it won a casino license. Spokespersons for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
In nearby Queens, billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen has proposed building a $8.1 billion Hard Rock casino on a parking lot of Citi Field. The complex would include a performance venue, a hotel and retail and shopping space.
Resorts World, meanwhile, has proposed investing more than $5 billion to expand an existing slots parlor into a full casino at the Aqueduct Race Track, which is also in Queens near John F. Kennedy International Airport. It too would add hotel, dining, and entertainment options.
Vicki Been, chair of New York Gaming Facility Location Board, said the panel believed the New York City market was “plenty strong” enough to sustain three casinos, despite their close proximity.
She said the three projects would generate roughly $7 billion in gambling revenues over a 10-year span. The projects would produce more than $5 billion more in other tax revenues and other community benefits, including public safety investments and public transit and roadway improvements, Been said.
A group of anti-casino protesters chanted “Shame on you! Shame on you!” as they were escorted out of the meeting at the CUNY Graduate Center in midtown.
Jack Hu, an anti-casino organizer, said afterward that the proposals would have a disproportionately negative impact in the city’s Asian American communities, which are largely concentrated in Queens.
“Our seniors and working people have long been dehumanized by casino operators, treated as cash cows to milk for money,” he said, backed by other opponents holding protest signs outside the building. “They bus our seniors to casinos, and they give them meal and gambling vouchers in the hopes that they’ll stay long enough to lose their entire Social Security check.”
The commission is authorized to license up to three casinos in the New York City area after voters approved a referendum back in 2013 opening the door to casino gambling statewide.
Since then, four full casinos with table games have opened in New York, but all of them are located upstate, miles away from Manhattan. The state also has nine gambling halls offering slot machines and other electronic gambling machines, but no live table games.
The closely watched competition for a New York City license began with a crowded field, with some eight proposals in the running as recently as September.
But four of the high-profile plans failed to get the stamp of approval from local advisory boards, automatically knocking them out of contention.
Among the most notable was a Jay-Z-backed plan to build a Caesars Palace in Times Square, as well as two other resorts proposed in central Manhattan.
Then in October, MGM abruptly pulled out of the license sweepstakes, saying the “competitive and economic assumptions underpinning” their plans had changed. The Las Vegas casino giant had planned a major expansion of the Empire City Casino, a slots parlor located at the Yonkers Raceway north of Manhattan.
—Philip Marcelo, Associated Press
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