NY Casino Sites to be Announced Today

By Mike Kane 

A major step in New York’s march toward full-scale commercial casinos will take place Wednesday in Albany when recommendations for up to four upstate sites are announced by the Gaming Facility Location Board. 

Members of the board appointed by the New York Gaming Commission reviewed a total of 16 proposals to build the destination resorts in three regions of the state north and west of New York City. Each region is to receive one license and the board can recommend that one of the regions receive a second license. It is expected that the Catskill/Hudson Valley region of Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties–the closest to the New York metro area with its huge population–will be awarded the second license. 

Earlier this year, residents of Saratoga Springs, home to the historic Saratoga Race Course and part of the Capital/Saratoga region, successfully fought a proposal by the owners of Saratoga Casino and Raceway to seek a license to expand its video lottery terminal (VLT) facility at the 73-year-old Standardbred track into a full-fledged casino with table games. Saratoga Casino and Raceway is located about one mile from America’s oldest Thoroughbred track. The closest of the four remaining bidders in the Capital/Saratoga region to the Saratoga Race Course is a site 24 miles away in Schenectady. 

Saratoga Casino and Raceway has partnered with Churchill Downs on a Capital region proposal, called Capital View Casino and Resort, east of Albany in the Rensselaer County town of East Greenbush. Also, Saratoga Casino and Raceway is a partner in the Hudson Valley Casino & Resort proposal in Newburgh. 

The third region is the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes, an L-shaped area with a base along the Pennsylvania border around the city of Binghamton and a narrow leg that extends north between Rochester and Syracuse to the southern shore of Lake Ontario. 

New York governor Andrew Cuomo said in August 2011 that his administration was actively involved in determining whether casinos should be legalized in the state. A proposal to amend the constitution passed two consecutive sessions of the state legislature and was approved by voters–57-43%–in Nov. 2013. While it permits a total of seven casinos in the state, the legislation calls for upstate casinos to be built first–to foster economic development–to be followed in seven years by up to three casinos in the New York City metro region. 

New York already is home to five upstate casinos owned by Native American tribes and nine racetracks that have the (VLT), electronic slot machines on their grounds. The Cuomo administration reached agreements with the tribes not to place competing casinos near their properties. The VLT facilities were approved in Oct. 2001, a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and did not require a constitutional amendment because they are considered part of the state lottery. Two other tracks–Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course–offer nothing but Thoroughbred racing. 

Many of the most prominent national and international gaming companies are among the bidders ready to launch projects. The group includes Genting, the Malaysian powerhouse which operates the Resorts World Casino at Aqueduct Racetrack that has pumped millions of dollars into New York’s Thoroughbred racing and breeding industries, Caesars Entertainment, Hard Rock, Mohegan Sun, Empire Resorts, Penn National and Full House Resorts. Genting is involved in two proposals for Orange County, the closest county to New York City in the casino sweepstakes. Critics of the three southern-most proposals in Orange County contend that casinos located there would be so convenient to New York City residents that they would doom to failure developments in either Sullivan or Ulster counties, which are part of the economically stressed Catskill Mountains.

The meeting will be streamed live on the New York Gaming Commission’s website starting at 2:00 p.m.