E23. That’s the provisional name for a casino complex that developer David Flaum has proposed for the Albany area, right on the New York State Thruway. The budget ($300 
million-$400 million) is modest. Flaum is not. “This thing, frankly, is going to make a lot of money,” he told the Albany Common Council. He was addressing the council because he wants its official blessing before he applies for one of the four casino licenses that will soon be up for grabs. “Please think of this as more of an entertainment complex. It’s not about taking the last dollar out of someone’s pocket,” he added. Revenue would be distributed across 19 counties, thanks to Flaum’s partnership with Capital District Off-Track Betting.
Flaum has another casino iron in the fire, having contracted with the Seneca Indian Nation to build the latter’s controversial Monroe County casino (the one the town of Henrietta is fighting). He doesn’t have an operating partner for his Albany plan but says his phone has been ringing off the hook. He’s promising union jobs and free transit, as well as a $2 million fund to prevent foreclosures and do other good works. (The mother of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY] might be displaced by the casino site.) In addition to gambling, Flaum is promising 350 hotel rooms, an “indoor horse riding rink; outdoor trails; and and indoor water park bigger than the one at Great Escape in Lake George.” Speaking of escapes, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan doesn’t want this project to leap the city line to Rensselaer County.
Wow. Flaum has just upped the ante in New York State. Who’s next? (It doesn’t hurt that Flaum is a “george” Democratic Party donor and that the Flaums have showered Gov. Andrew Cuomo [D] with campaign cash to the tune of $95,000.)
In one of the most entertaining casino stories of the year, the City of Boston is demanding that Suffolk Downs undertake a new environmental impact study. It claims that the existing one is a mashup of the old Caesars Entertainment one, with some allowances made for Mohegan Sun‘s participation. But since the latter’s involvement will require the movement of the now-infamous horse barns, it stinks to high Heaven — or East Boston, which some residents would say is the same thing.
Boston is calling for additional scrutiny of “odor impacts” such as “maximum storage durations for each pile” and “maximum odor generation potential on a peak summer day, in odor units per second.” (Suffolk Downs is closely flanked on at least one side by residential development. We don’t think the nearby tank farm will mind.) You could say that displacing the horses closer to residential property to make room for Mohegan Sun smells a bit.
Suffolk Downs also figures in one of the more interesting negotiations I’ve come across. Somerville Mayor Joseph Curatone is dead-set against gambling. And, in his surrounding community accord with Suffolk, he was able to ban “aggressive advertising and recruiting patrons” by the casino. Even so, Somerville will paid $100,000 a year, some of which will go to train citizens for casino work. Concluded Curatone, “Mohegan has been very professional to work with, despite my position on gambling.”
And for excitement, we’ll always have Laughlin. Just kidding.
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