Title: The Final Round for NYC Casino Licenses

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Well, the final round to secure a highly lucrative casino license in New York City and/or Yonkers is underway, with three winners slated to be chosen by year's end. Eight proposals are on the table, and the stakes and potential revenue are high. Developers are betting on billions of dollars in revenue and telling city officials that thousands of jobs will be created. Mine's the best proposal. No, mine is. The communities in question, though, are also having intense debates themselves about whether they want a casino in their neighborhood and the effects they might have on the people who live nearby.

Joining us now to break down the latest is Arun Venugopal, senior reporter for WNYC and Gothamist Race and Justice Unit. Arun, hey, always great to have you on the show.

Arun Venugopal: Hey, Brian, great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: This casino license story has been unfolding for two years now, but you write the proposals are now in project reviews by community advisory committees. What does that mean?

Arun Venugopal: It's one of those kinds of typically wonkish names that can make you completely ignore, I guess, the gravity and the potential impact of what is happening right now. Where we've gone from years, I mean, really much longer than a couple of years, Brian, if we're talking about the buildup to this, where we had a prior round 10, 12 years ago of upstate casinos, and under the Cuomo administration and the State Gaming Commission, they decided they would give upstate casinos a head start by about 10 or 12 years before we had downstate casinos. That's where we are at now. We had 11. Now it's down to 8 casino proposals in New York City, one that is outside, it's in Yonkers.

There's seven scattered across the boroughs and then one in Westchester. It's now in the hands of each of these community advisory committees, or CACs, which basically are made up of representatives of elected officials, starting with the governor and all the way down to the council member of these districts. They are going to be tasked with reviewing all these materials. There's lots of materials, lots of, I guess, promises being made, and to decide whether or not they want to give the thumbs up to these proposals.

Brian Lehrer: Are those the internal debates within the communities, and then there's an overarching body that's going to decide on which of the competing proposals they're going to accept because there are only three licenses to give?

Arun Venugopal: Correct. Now, each of these is in the hands of elected officials, their representatives from these communities. You've got a few around Manhattan. You've got one or two in the Bronx, you've got one in Brooklyn, and then a couple in Queens. You have, in all those cases, representatives of the mayor and the governor, but also of the borough president, the state assembly member and senator, as well as the local council member. They're having public hearings, all listed publicly on the New York State Gaming Commission's website. They've had a few already happen, a few upcoming.

At the end of this process, by the end of September, they have to take a vote. It needs a super majority. If one committee doesn't give four out of six votes to that proposal, then it's dead. Nothing happens. It does not advance to the final round, which is in the hands of the State Gaming Commission. They have to decide. Theoretically, you could have no proposals get greenlit. Theoretically, you could have many of them get greenlit. You could have, I don't know, two or three in Manhattan all get greenlit. I don't expect that to happen, given the politics and the elected officials in those areas, but there's no telling what could emerge from this process. Out of these eight, what is it going to be winnowed down to? We can't say.

Brian Lehrer: In a minute, I'm going to ask you an example about the internal debate in Coney Island around this that you reported on, but I also want to invite our listeners in. If you know that your community is one of the ones that's considering or being considered for one of these three casino licenses, call up and weigh in. Do you want it? Do you want to make your case for your community? Ooh, pick me. Pick me, or do you want to push back against it coming to your community? I have a feeling we'll get more pushback calls than promotional calls.

Promoters of a casino in your neighborhood, encouraged to call in as well, just because I think I anticipate who tends to call in on these things, and we want both sides of the story. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, with our Arun Venugopal. Coney Island. You spoke with Marissa Solomon, a member of the Community Advisory Council appointed by Assembly Member Alec Brook-Krasny, who's pushing back against the job numbers that the Coney Island project is promising. Instead of thousands of jobs created by this one project, she's saying that number would be nowhere close to what the developer is promising. Can you break down this argument a little bit and the context for it in Coney Island?

Arun Venugopal: Yes. Brian, the point she was making at this hearing a couple of weeks ago didn't have to do with the overall number of jobs that the developer is projecting that would take place at this site on the Coney Island waterfront, where all the existing amusement park rides are. She was, for the sake of her point, accepting at face value the number of overall jobs that would be generated. The developers were saying, "We're going to have 4,500 permanent jobs." That's after the construction. What she was taking issue with was the promise of how many jobs would go to local residents.

They've broken this down. The developers have said, "Out of the 4,500, we're going to have about 44%, or rather, to the rest of Brooklyn, 9% of the jobs would go to residents of Coney Island and Gravesend." Now, one of the big points that they've been making repeatedly, that's the developers, is that this is a neighborhood that has been economically struggling for a long time. It's not the Coney Island of yore, where you had this bustling, thriving, and very sentimental economic landscape. They said it's become such a summer-only attraction, and then the rest of the year, it's quiet. There's a lot of unemployment there. They're saying, "We're going to really address that."

What Marissa Solomon, who is a member of this community advisory committee, is saying, and she's been a critic of this project for a long time. She's saying that you yourselves, as the developers, are only promising 9% of those jobs to Coney Island. That amounts to less than 200 jobs. I think she said 182 full-time jobs. They're promising 15% of those jobs would go to Queens, 15% would go to Manhattan.

In essence, she's saying, "You're going to give more jobs to people from these other boroughs than you are to the neighborhood. It's not really going to do what you've been promising for a long time, which is to substantively address the employment issue here in Coney Island," which is part of the reason they have garnered support from local residents and nonprofit groups who are trying to address employment in the area. They did not really, I guess, reject the premise of her argument. They said only that these are current projections we have now. We're going to revise those projections down the line, and then you could see more jobs going to local residents at that point.

Brian Lehrer: Even with the jobs, interesting. Some of the texts that are coming in relative to places that have casinos, one listener writes, "I've been to Rivers Casino & Resort in Schenectady. A sad, sad place. It's never busy and has done minimal to improve the immediate neighborhood or Schenectady in general." Another one. Tracy in Jamaica, "The casino in South Ozone Park, when they first opened, was thriving. Attendance was high. I went there a year or two ago. It's empty. It looks like what Atlantic City used to look like, so I don't know why they want to build more casinos."

A couple of other ones like that have come in. One sums up this text thread coming in from various people that says, "How many failed casinos do we need to prove that this is a bad idea?" One of the bidders for a casino is Steve Cohen, who owns the Mets, and he wants one right there near Citi Field. Jimmy, in that general area, Woodside is calling in again, I think in opposition. Jimmy, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Jimmy: This is me.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, you.

Jimmy: Hi. Adams had a big groundbreaking on 3,000 apartments within spitting distance of this proposed casino. The numbers that they put don't add up. Saying 530, not jobs, says permanent careers. This is probably, if I were to guess, or worth more investigation, be worth investigating, that the numbers, you don't have 530 people maintaining, really, a 3,000 apartment complex. It's going to be built on top of submerged streams coming in and out. It'll be a wreck. I'm old enough also to remember the failure of OTB and what it did to neighborhoods. That's about all I have to say for now. There's a lot more, but we have a lot of them. A big plate on it.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think the negative effects would extend to Woodside for people? I know the area well. I grew up near there. This is one express stop from Citi Field on the 7 train, but that's a bunch of blocks. That's 61st Street compared to a bunch of streets more up there.

Jimmy: No, I'm talking about the one on Linden Place. The development on Linden Place. That's within spitting distance of where the casinos proposed being built near Citi Field.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. Even closer in. Arun, can we take from the texts and calls that we're getting, and you heard me give an explicit invitation for people from neighborhoods who want to promote their local bids. We're not getting any.

Arun Venugopal: No. Interesting.

Brian Lehrer: Would you say that this is a story, to some degree, of developers who want casinos, and the majority in any of the targeted neighborhoods don't?

Arun Venugopal: I think that's safe to say based on what I've encountered. You definitely have elected officials who are excited about this, but lots of community, I guess, dissent. Right now, we're seeing these hearings where I think we're seeing more of that emerge, a lot of concerns, because sometimes it's just more mundane. People don't want thousands of more people clogging up their streets. Say, in the case of the Coney, where people are saying like, "That's going to fundamentally alter on a very narrow strip. The amount of traffic we have on a given day. It's going to affect if an emergency vehicle wants to get through

On the other hand, there is so much potential money that could emerge from this, that, yes, it is getting a lot of developers, people in the gaming industry, but I think the problem with projections is that really, nobody has any idea what it's going to mean when these two or three casinos get built. On one hand, there has been this long trend of more and more getting developed in the Northeast, other parts of the country. At some point, you started to see diminishing returns from casinos because there's only so much market that they can satisfy, and people see less and less gains from that.

On the other hand, there are people who say, "This is New York City. This is a singular market. We have never seen a city with this untapped potential have the opportunity to sort of step onto the world gaming stage." Some of the projections, Brian, are seeing that we're going to have what could be the biggest or among the biggest gaming sites in the world. There are all kinds of competing arguments here. There are people in some of these areas who are saying, "You're going to cannibalize our existing restaurant and hospitality industry, recreation, and whatnot."

Then there are people who are in support of these casinos, the backers themselves saying, "No, no, no, we're going to direct tourists to these places," but nobody knows because it hasn't happened here yet.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more example. Sam in Manhattan is calling in after attending a community meeting last night on the proposed casino for Times Square. Sam, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling.

Sam: No, that was the First Avenue East Side site between 38th and 41st Street. There was a community--

Brian Lehrer: Okay, I apologize. That's another site. This is the one near the UN you're talking about, right?

Sam: Correct. It's been a dead zone for years. The community got a briefing from the gaming commission last evening. The community is split. I wouldn't say there's a lot of opposition. The opposition is about traffic and proposed traffic. The site is going to be all underground, so we're not that against it. What the community wants is greater affordable housing units on the site and some other amenities, but that area has no commercial development at all. It's not even nice to walk there at night. It's very dark south of the UN and north of 38th Street. There's nothing. Some livelihood would benefit the community.

The other question is what if five communities vote yes? Who makes the final decision on the three?

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Sam. Arun, what's the answer to his question?

Arun Venugopal: Yes, that is a completely plausible scenario. Five of them could all say yes because these are committees that are not connected to one another. There is a little overlap here and there. We have, in one instance, there are two different community advisory committees that have one person, Richard Gottfried, the former state legislator, on both of those. Basically, they're all working independently of one another. That is plausible, but yes, all of them head to the State Gaming Commission, which will make the final vote, final decision in the fall. By the end of this year, in December, at some point, we're going to see those three licenses be awarded.

There are a couple of these existing facilities like Resorts World in Queens, which are seeking to expand their existing facilities. There's some talk that maybe you might see it go to these places, which have existing facilities. You could quickly game it up with this additional surge in funding and resources, but really, nobody knows. It's up to them.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing in our last minute or so, that last caller was talking about the proposed one for Midtown East, which I thought was going to be about Midtown West, but we do have a text on this, and I'm curious to get your take. Listener writes, "As a worker in the Broadway industry, the argument against the Times Square Casino is simple and obvious. A casino can go anywhere and create good-paying union jobs for those who build it and work in it. Broadway can only exist right where it is, and a Times Square casino will endanger thousands of existing good-paying jobs in our industry."

Do you understand that argument? Because I'm sure the developers would say, "No, this is going to bring even more tourists to Times Square and there'll be more people going to Broadway plays." Why might not that be true?

Arun Venugopal: I think that is just as you said, that's the argument that the developers have been saying. "We're going to minimize the amount of hotel rooms on site, minimize the number of restaurants on site. We're going to direct thousands of people every day to existing hotels, existing restaurants." Presumably, what they're saying is they're only going to do so much gambling, and they're going to be going out there. What we don't know is how much of this is a-- what's the word? A zero-sum game.

Whether they're going to actually bring lots of new people who are going to fly into New York from all parts of the country and all parts of the world and do both, or if people are going to say, "Let's go to New York City, and oh, we could have spent $600 on a couple tickets of Broadway, but we can't. We only have so much money. Let's spend that instead on this other thing." These are the unknowns, Brian. That's the fear of some of the people in Broadway, including the Broadway League, this powerful body, which is very vociferously opposing this project.

You do have actors groups and all who are saying, "No, this would be good because they're going to actually have opportunities at a new entertainment venue, which is this place, Caesars Palace Times Square. Huge brand. Investing lots of money in this project and in gaming, but also in other things as well. We don't know. This is the trepidation you're seeing from different corners of the Midtown entertainment complex.

Brian Lehrer: You mean people would rather play games on machines than engage in an illuminating arts and entertainment experience? That'll never hap-- Oh, never mind. WNYC's Arun Venugopal. Thanks for filling us in on the casino.

Arun Venugopal: Sure thing, Brian. Thanks.

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