Manhattan has just about everything a resident could possibly want. Everything but a casino.
The final plan for a casino in Manhattan still under consideration for a coveted gambling license was rejected on Monday, assuring that no gambling house will open in the heart of New York City.
The groups behind the proposed site, which they called Freedom Plaza, offered numerous sweeteners to win over opponents and skeptics, including an 11th-hour offer to build more than 1,000 affordable housing units on the plot, but the plan met the same fate as two other doomed Manhattan proposals.
The decision on Monday, made by a community advisory committee that took into consideration local support for the project, leaves five gambling facilities in the running for up to three licenses, which will be awarded by the end of the year. Four are in the other boroughs of New York City, outside Manhattan, with another in Yonkers.
The Freedom Plaza casino, which would have been operated by the gambling company Mohegan, would have risen on the largest undeveloped tract of land in Manhattan, more than six acres just south of the headquarters of the United Nations. The owner of the property, Stefan Soloviev, is the son of the billionaire developer Sheldon H. Solow.
“Manhattan is the undisputed capital of the world, and it deserved a fully integrated resort that would have attracted visitors while serving the needs of its community,” Michael Hershman, the chief executive of the Soloviev Group, the development firm for the project, said in a statement after the vote.
Three elected officials whose representatives on the six-member committee voted against the plan said in a statement afterward that residents near the site, on the East Side of Manhattan, had legitimate concerns about the project, including an increase in traffic congestion, especially during a week like this one, when the U.N. General Assembly is in session for its annual general debate.
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The post Manhattan Will Not Get a Casino as Final Proposal Is Voted Down appeared first on New York Times.
