For Casino Operators, It’s Deadline Day

Good morning. It’s Friday, and it’s deadline day for applications for three casino licenses that are up for grabs. We’ll also look at how a new rail line connecting Brooklyn and Queens could touch off a housing boom.

As applications go, they are lengthy. One runs more than 50,000 pages, with all the supporting documents that had to be attached. Another application is a mere 900.

Bank references and tax returns are a must. So are high and low estimates of revenue from slot machines and other projections. These applications are from would-be casino operators seeking one of three licenses that are up for grabs in and around New York City.

Today is deadline day for the applications. The state panel that will award the licenses, the Gaming Facility Location Board, expects to have eight applications in hand by closing time this afternoon. Some have already been delivered by hand to its office in Schenectady. Some came from applicants that filed with fanfare, issuing news releases and, in one case, organizing a rally in Times Square on Thursday.

That gathering promoted Caesars Palace Times Square, a joint venture of Caesars Entertainment, Roc Nation and SL Green Realty Corporation. It came a day after a rally by the No Times Square Casino Coalition, which opposes the project.

The coalition’s message hovered over the Caesars Palace rally, on electronic billboards that said “No Times Square Casino.” But so did a pro-casino message from Caesars Palace, on three billboards across Seventh Avenue.

Each side has support from influential unions. At the Caesars Palace rally, participants waved signs for the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and 32BJ SEIU, which represents building workers, security officers and food service employees. In the crowd, Billy Kelly, a plumber from the Bronx, called the prospect of the casino “awesome” because it would provide “a good three years of work for construction workers.”

The No Times Square Coalition — which marshaled stagehands and other theater workers for its rally, along with the actress LaChanze — maintains that the casino would hurt Broadway and would create “fresh quality-of-life problems for residents,” according to a statement from the group. Caesars Palace Times Square countered with a statement that said its bid had been designed “to help the theater ecosystem succeed.” The statement also said that Caesars would buy thousands of theater tickets, improve safety and security in the neighborhood and “provide support for mental health services.”

And in Queens

Two applications for casinos in Queens are expected, one from Resorts World at Aqueduct Racetrack. The other, Metropolitan Park, would be built on 50 acres of parking lots around Citi Field, where the Mets play their home games. The partners in that project include Steven Cohen, the owner of the Mets, and Hard Rock International. Their application also calls for 450 units of affordable housing.

They said that Metropolitan Park would draw 8.6 million to 10.3 million visitors in its first year.

Making the case for Manhattan

The team behind Avenir, planned for a vacant lot near the Javits Convention Center, made the case for Manhattan.

Avenir — proposed by the World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein, Rush Street Gaming and Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment — argued that at “it is not in the economic interest of Manhattan to force its tourists to travel to other boroughs to enjoy gaming and its amenities,” according to a summary from Avenir.

Another application would put a casino across town, near the United Nations. That plan — called Freedom Plaza and submitted by the Soloviev Group and Mohegan, a company controlled by the Mohegan Tribe that manages casinos in three states and Canada — also promises just over 1,000 apartments, including 513 that would be designated affordable, and five acres of park space.

Applications are also expected for the Coney, at Coney Island; in Yonkers, from MGM; and for Bally’s Bronx at Port Ferry. If Bally’s gets a license, the Trump Organization would get a $115 million windfall under the purchase agreement that gave Bally’s control of the site, a public golf course that had been called Trump Links.

The timetable for the licensing process calls for community advisory committees to be set up to hold public hearings about each proposal. The committees will then decide whether to forward the bids to the casino location board, which will award the licenses by the end of the year.

The board will not have as many applications to consider as had once been thought. Last month Wynn Resorts and the developer of Hudson Yards dropped out. So did Las Vegas Sands, which had been planning a bid for a license on casino on the site of Nassau Coliseum on Long Island.

Weather

Expect a mostly cloudy day with a high near 73 and a chance of afternoon showers. Thunderstorms are likely tonight, with temperatures falling to the mid-60s.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

In effect until the Fourth of July.

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Will housing boom follow a new rail line?

The Interborough Express, also known as the IBX, is planned as a light-rail line that would connect Brooklyn and Queens. Gov. Kathy Hochul recently approved $2.75 billion in funding for it.

My colleague Stefanos Chen writes that the IBX is getting the attention of real estate developers. Over a decade, more than 70,000 new homes could be built within a half-mile of each of the 19 stops planned for the new line if some land-use changes are approved by city officials, according to an analysis by the New York Building Congress, a trade group for construction and real estate companies. The number of units could go as high as 100,000, depending on how land use rules are altered.

“Those are eye-popping numbers,” said Tom Wright, the president of the Regional Plan Association, a planning group that has been pushing for a version of the route since the 1990s.

But the path to approving more housing around the IBX corridor could well be challenging. The 14-mile route cuts through residential neighborhoods, gritty manufacturing districts and busy commercial hubs, all with their own zoning restrictions, many in areas where local officials oppose new housing.

The Building Congress report suggests a rezoning approach that would allow a moderate increase in housing along most of the route, with an early emphasis near stations that already have transit options and higher density, like Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.

METROPOLITAN diary