New York is experiencing gambling fever, with eight casino construction projects in one of its districts on the table. A state board created specifically to grant licenses will make its decision public before the end of the year, and there will be five initiatives left along the way, since only three licenses will be approved. This unusual fervor tangentially touches the Trump Organization, since one of the projects was planned to be built on the golf course that the Republican president’s emporium managed in the Bronx. The eight licenses were requested in June, in an unusually short period for the bidding, since the three developers who win the concession must deposit 500 million dollars each – the price of the license – before the 31st. of December. The first phase of evaluating the proposals has cleared the competition in a pre-selection carried out by the so-called community advisory committees (CAC), with six representatives of the State, the municipality and the district corresponding to the proposed location. These first-instance committees have validated two of the projects, one in southeast Queens and another in Yonkers. The Gaming Facilities Location Board, or Gaming Board, will finally rule on them. Another three are pending voting by the corresponding CAC, while three more, the most challenging for the urban fabric of the city, have fallen by the wayside. The most striking was the casino planned next to the UN headquarters, on the east side of Manhattan, rejected on September 22. Manhattan has not had any luck in the distribution of cards, since, in addition to the one next to the United Nations, two projects in Times Square and in the financial area of the district have been rejected. In contrast, community advisory committees have approved a project in the Bronx, the district with the lowest income in the city. It is the juiciest project, due to the relationship it has with the golf course that the Trump Organization once managed. If finally approved, the president’s family emporium would receive 115 million for the agreement that Bally’s, the casino’s promoter group, signed with the Organization in 2023. This amount is added to the 60 million that Bally’s already paid to acquire the rights to exploit the site. Of all the projects, it offers the most cinematic setting: over the gentle hills of the golf course you can see the Manhattan skyline. Plans to open new casinos had been in the air for years, since the state legislature approved an expansion of gambling in 2013. Until then, only certain types of gambling were allowed: racetracks, state lotteries and casinos in indigenous territories. The modification of the state constitution has since allowed the opening of four casinos in the north of the State. In 2022, Albany, home of the state Congress, approved a process to grant three projects to the south of the State (New York City and its suburbs) as part of that year’s budget negotiations.
Numerous reviews
The proliferation of casinos has been met with numerous criticisms, because, according to many residents, they will significantly change – for the worse, they fear – the landscape of the neighborhoods where they are built, including emblematic spaces of the city such as Coney Island, with one of the longest beaches in New York, and Citi Field, the Mets’ large stadium. In Coney Island, for example, residents and operators of the amusement parks that line the boardwalk have risen up against the plan. The communities surrounding Citi Field, in a neighborhood with a high percentage of immigrant population, have also suggested an alternative for the work. The promoters respond by ensuring that, by law, they must invest a minimum of 500 million in the area where they are located, which can mean everything from the construction of social housing to the improvement of local public transportation. According to a study by City Limits, the new gaming facilities will generate 5.5 billion in gross income, 841 million dollars a year in taxes and will create 30,000 jobs. You can consult other letters in this section here.
