Orange County in New York State could get a casino by default, as Catskills-area projects continue to fall by the wayside. The latest one to drop out is Foxwood Resort Casino‘s joint-venture bid to redevelop the old Grossinger’s Hotel site. Foxwoods says the Orange County proposals (including one from Caesars Entertainment) caused funding to dry up for Foxwoods: “We always approached this project by assuming that there would be two casinos in the Catskills, but what we didn’t plan for, and cannot compete with, is a casino project in Orange County. Such a location would siphon off the business and guests we projected would come to Grossingers.”
Already Len Wolman‘s rival Trading Cove Associates abandoned a Sullivan County effort. The Nevele project in Ulster County is still in the running (alth0ugh it is issuing a Nevele-or-Orange ultimatum to the state), as are two Sullivan-sited proposals, both on different slices of the old Concord resort. One is backed by Mohegan Sun and the other by Genting Group affiliate Empire Resorts. Liberty, N.Y., Supervisor Charlie Barbuti blames, saying the two-year development deadline should have been from when the casinos completed their due diligence, which would have put all four Sullivan County proposals well ahead in the game.
“But the money goes where it gets the best return, and that’s Orange County,” Barbuti lamented. “That’s been Sullivan County’s problem for 40 years. The money doesn’t show up here.”
(Foxwoods has also lost much of the financing for its Fall River casino proposal.)
Upstate, the Saratoga Gaming & Casino/ project in East Greenbush has been renamed Capital View Casino & Resort. (“The Casino at East Greenbush” had a remarkably short lifespan as a moniker.) That’s not all. Architectural renderings of the eight-story hotel and 100K square-feet casino show a Dutch Colonial influence, a nod to the area’s ethnic heritage. Ponds, streams, walking trails and gardens are promised, to give the $300 million casino a pastoral flavor. The gardens serve a practical purpose, as the vegetables and herbs harvested therefrom can be incorporated into the food served at Capital View.
One selling point for the casino is that it would capture revenue that might otherwise go to MGM Springfield. Opponents, however, claim that “the proposed casino is in direct conflict with all previously adopted town local laws, zoning ordinances, comprehensive plans and previous approvals.” It’s sited in a low-density agricultural district.
(Meanwhile, if there were an acid test for deserving a resort casino, poverty-stricken Florida, N.Y., would pass easily.)
who claimed they would suffer “irreparable injury” if Pennsylvania goes ahead with awarding a second casino license in downtown Philadelphia. The court was not sympathetic to the investors’ argument, which it summarized as “every casino in Pennsylvania will either stay in business forever or the number of casinos licensed in Pennsylvania will contract if and when an entity goes out of business or is stripped of its license.”* If Boston Mayor Martin Walsh is negotiating in bad faith, continuing to insist that Beantown is the host community to two casinos, where’s the point in giving him another week to reach a surrounding-community agreement? Either way, this seems like a baroque exercise by Walsh to try and kill the casinos outright.
* In North Carolina, Caesars is on pace and budget for Cherokee Valley River Casino & Hotel, having completed the mass grading. So says GM Lumpy Lambert. That’s not big news. I just couldn’t resist quoting an executive named “Lumpy Lambert.”
