Category: Casino News

Having been run from pillar to post at Global Gaming Expo all week, we’re still in recovery. Ergo, we turn the bulk of this installment over to our Atlantic CIty bureau. What follows are a pair of letters sent to (but unlikely to be printed in) The Press of Atlantic City. Please enjoy them.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to build a casino megaresort if you don’t plan on paying for it. We learned that from Sheldon Adelson, who erected The Venetian out of other people’s pockets. By dint of releasing a new rendering of failsino Bally’s Las Vegas, Chairman Soo Kim scored himself a great deal of free media last weekend. The deck chairs on the Titanic have been duly rearranged.

See that weird-looking collection of high-rises above? Yeah, it’s not happening. Freedom Plaza, the something-for-everybody, New York City megaresort proposal of Soloviev Group and Mohegan Sun, got canned today. The relevant Community Advisory Committee voted it down, 4-2. Quality-of-life concerns were cited. Not even the transparent, last-minute offer to add a thousand more affordable-housing units to Freedom Plaza swayed votes. The CAC clearly saw it for the desperation (and stalling) tactic that it was. As usual, surrogates for Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and Mayor Eric Adams (I) flouted public sentiment, pimping for an unpopular development. They’d vote for anything spelled c-a-s-i-n-o. Will anyone remember at the next election?

Then there were seven … again. In a stunning reversal of fortune, Caesars Entertainment‘s plans for a Times Square casino have been ashcanned by the relevant Community Advisory Committee. The casino proposal had bitterly divided the Broadway community and was recently panned for its hostility toward pedestrians and bus passengers. Since the latter (plus subway commuters) were supposed to constitute 75% of the customer base, the behavior of Caesars and SL Green was perverse, to say the least, not least for a casino that projected a preposterous $2.3 billion a year in gambling revenue but was polling at anemic levels. “Despite extensive outreach by the applicants, that [necessary] level of support has not materialized,” said Councilman Erik Bottcher, who cast one of the ‘no’ votes.

Time to blow raspberries to the House Rules Committee. While permitting literally a thousand other amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act, it struck down Rep. Dina Titus‘ FAIR Bet Act, which would have redressed Congress’ imposition of new taxes on gambling losses. It was supposedly not germane to national defense, despite the fact that the Pentagon purveys a large fleet of slot machines, for the purpose of clawing back what little money it pays our servicemen and -women, to the tune of $100 million a year. Hypocrisy much?