Inside NYC's bid to become a gambling mecca as three Vegas-style casinos get the green light with first to open in spring
SOURCE:Daily Mail
By 2030, New York City is set to have three, full-sized casino resorts. They are owned by Resorts World, Bally's and Hard Rock. More ambitious proposals, such as a Times Square casino, were rejected.
New York City has its sights set on becoming a new Vegas as it gives the go-ahead for three full-sized casino resorts.
Government officials in the Big Apple are mainly fans of the Sin City-style gambling halls, as they will bring tens of thousands of jobs and boost the economy with a new, lucrative source for tax revenue.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said after the vote: 'The three approved casinos will generate billions of dollars for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and education, create tens of thousands of jobs and deliver real benefits to their surrounding communities.'
But residents living close to the two casinos in Queens and the one in the Bronx fear that their neighbors will get hooked on slot machines and that existing problems, such as prostitution, will only get worse.
Graciela Quispe, 27, lives in Corona, Queens, near where the Metropolitan Park casino-resort will be.
Quispe, along with other members of the Flushing Anti-Casino Group, attended a neighborhood protest before the vote was held on December 15 to decide whether to green-light the projects. They also disrupted the vote with chants of 'shame on you' and 'Hochul must go.'
'This area is surrounded by crime already, and I can't imagine the changes that are going to come after the casino is built. My neighborhood struggles with addictions to substances. It's also a red light district already, and a casino is definitely going to exacerbate those things,' Quispe told the Daily Mail.
Resorts World New York City, an already-existent casino attached to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Jamaica, Queens, will be the first approved project to break ground, with an anticipated opening of spring 2026.
Graciela Quispe, a 27-year-old resident of Corona, Queens, speaks at a rally where residents furiously protested the Metropolitan Park casino
Many of the signs at the protest were in Spanish and expressed outrage at politicians who supported the casinos. Their frustration with Governor Kathy Hochul was the most apparent
The Metropolitan Park location (rendering pictured) has been the most controversial applicant in front of the New York State Gaming Commission
Over the coming months, the gambling floor at Resorts World will be expanded and rearranged to make room for the site's first-ever high-limit rooms and table games such as blackjack, baccarat, roulette and poker.
Bally's Bronx, which will be built on top of Donald Trump's former golf course, is slated to open in 2030. According to the plans, it will contain over 500,000 square feet of gaming space, making it significantly larger than Vegas' Bellagio and Caesar's Palace combined.
The other Queens casino, the Metropolitan Park location, is a joint venture by Hard Rock International and billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen that is also scheduled for a 2030 opening. The facility will be built on top of Citi Field's current parking lots and has so far been the most controversial project of the three.
'This is not an investment in Queens. This is an investment in a billionaire,' Quispe said, referring to Cohen, who has a net worth of $23 billion. 'The fact that Kathy Hochul is saying this is an investment in our future... It's pointing to me that they do want to see our community become victims of gambling addictions.'
Once construction is complete, Metropolitan Park will support just over 4,000 full-time jobs with an average salary of $140,000, according to an executive summary document.
In a more recent document, Metropolitan Park claimed the average base hourly wage will be $60.11, a figure that rises to $110.84 with benefits.
Resorts World in Queens said the median compensation for full-time employees will be $150,000 a year, including benefits.
A rendering of what the expanded Resorts World New York City casino will look like. It is expected to be finished by spring of next year
The Bally's Resort in the Bronx, which has to be built from scratch, will be ready by 2030, according to developers
The Metropolitan Park development, also projected to be ready by 2030, is set to see a full overhaul of the area around Citi Field, where the New York Mets play
Bally's in the Bronx appears to have the lowest compensation of the three. Without benefits, workers will make an average of $30.40 per hour, and with benefits, it will rise to $36.10 per hour, which is about $75,000 per year, assuming the employee works 40 hours a week.
Gaming Commission Chair Brian O'Dwyer touted the number of permanent full-time jobs the casinos are set to bring - about 11,500 in total - immediately after the vote.
'We have three new casinos, hundreds, if not thousands, of good, union jobs coming into the communities. It's going to be really transformational for those communities,' he said.
State Senator Jessica Ramos, one of the few politicians at the state level to oppose the casinos, acknowledged that there will be good, union jobs to come out of these projects, particularly for the construction workers who will spend the next five years building the massive resorts.
'Though those jobs are good, union jobs, the casinos suck the economy out of their neighboring commercial corridors,' Ramos, a progressive Democrat, said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Ramos, who was at the Sunday protest along with her constituents, said the Metropolitan Park casino may lead to the closure of many businesses in Elmhurst, Corona, and other neighborhoods nearby that she represents.
'Many of our small businesses have been lobbied to believe that they are going to feel a multiplier effect,' she added. 'Casinos are designed to trap people in, not to inspire them to leave and spend money elsewhere.'
The Metropolitan Park casino will be built on Roosevelt Avenue, which runs underneath the 7 Train. That street, she said, has a pervasive organized crime problem, which includes sex trafficking, the sale of fake documents, loan sharking and other types of illicit activity. She said putting a casino right next to all of that will only make conditions worse.
State Senator Jessica Ramos (pictured center) marched through Queens ahead of the casino vote, which took place the next day
New York State Gaming Commission Chair Brian O'Dwyer (center) said after the vote that the three casinos would 'be really transformational' for the communities receiving them
'This, to me, adds up to a very high cost and very little benefit,' she said.
Officials in favor of the casinos say the benefits are clear - billions of dollars in taxes flowing to the state treasury.
Greg Reimers, a member of the New York Gaming Facility Location Board, said that the completed projects would bring in close to $7 billion in gambling tax revenue for the state between 2027 and 2036.
Other board members pointed out that the casino developers are also going to pay a combined one-time licensing fee of $1.5 billion. All of that is on top of an additional $5.9 billion in other state and local taxes.
'No alternative scenarios produce comparable revenue or fiscal benefits,' Reimers said.
Jonathan Krutz, a former longtime economics and business professor at Boise State University, does not buy into the idea that casinos will be an economic boon to New York City.
Krutz has studied the economic impact of casinos on towns and cities all over the country for nearly three decades.
A 2022 study he authored examined retail sales and employment data in 567 localities with or without casinos. It relied on 15 years of Census Bureau data from 2002 to 2017.
Governor Kathy Hochul has been one of the loudest proponents of the three casinos coming to New York City, saying in part that they will 'generate billions of dollars for the MTA and education'
State Senator Ramos has also raised concerns that the Metropolitan Park casino may not be legally required to follow through on community benefits it promised. These include adding 25 acres of public park space, building a Taste of Queens Food Hall and completely overhauling the Mets-Willet Point train station
Krutz concluded that in Iowa, as one example, casinos did not boost local retail sales. Instead, they siphoned spending away from existing businesses, according to the study.
'What we found was a pretty steady, robust rate of growth over time in every city, except the cities that put in casinos, where that rate of growth essentially flattened. And it was for every one of them,' Krutz said.
After the 2008 recession, Krutz said the data showed casinos became an even bigger liability for struggling cities.
'In recessionary times, the casinos were a drag on the local economy. Growth rates in casino areas were two to three times lower than in non-casino areas,' he said.
When it comes to employment, Krutz claims that casino operators frequently overpromise and underdeliver.
'Over the 15-year period that was studied, areas with casinos had a lower rate of employment than areas without casinos,' he said. 'The casinos are actually hurting employment, even as they're trumpeting, "Hey, we're hiring all these people."'
In the study, he argued that when people spend money on slots instead of patronizing local businesses, those businesses lose out on revenue, which then leads to them laying off workers. This, he claimed, offsets the number of jobs casinos bring to a community.
Krutz believes the same economic drain he's seen in other places will now repeat itself in New York City.
The current footprint of the Resorts World New York City location
Steve Cohen (pictured at a Mets game on August 14, 2025) has been intimately involved in the process of getting a casino built on top of where Citi Field's parking lot is now
One of State Senator Ramos's chief concerns is that Cohen and the developers on the Metropolitan Park project won't follow through on the community benefits that have been promised in press releases and filings with the Gaming Commission.
'One of the many, many flags that I raised throughout this process was the lack of a binding community benefit agreement,' Ramos told the Daily Mail.
'The Steve Cohen team would turn around and say that the community benefit agreements being included in the casino application made it binding. But I am unsure of the true legality of that.'
The developers say they have committed to adding 25 acres of public park space, building a Taste of Queens Food Hall and completely overhauling the Mets-Willet Point train station.
The Daily Mail approached Cohen's team and Hard Rock for further comment on the community benefits it has laid out so far.
Full-scale gambling coming to the Big Apple has been inevitable since voters approved an amendment to the New York State constitution in 2013 that allowed for seven commercial casinos throughout the state.
The amendment was structured so that four casino licenses would be first be awarded to upstate locations, allowing those businesses to gain a loyal customer base before glamorous New York City casinos sucked up all the oxygen.
In 2022, about ten years after the amendment passed, the state began the process to award the remaining three downstate casino licenses to interested developers.
Slot machines at the Resorts World casino in Jamaica, Queens
Companies wasted no time floating ambitious proposals. Jay-Z's Roc Nation, along with Caesars Entertainment, wanted to build a casino in Times Square. Others proposed casinos in Yonkers, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and Manhattan's Midtown East.
Community Advisory Committees had to vote on whether each bid had enough local support. These committees also determined whether the developers complied with land-use requirements and environmental reviews.
Only four advanced past the committee reviews, including the three that were approved last week and MGM’s Yonkers proposal.
MGM then withdrew its application from consideration on October 14, the date the developers needed to submit crucial documents to the Gaming Commission.
The Gaming Commission still needs to confirm that the three casinos it approved have met all necessary requirements by December 31, though this is largely seen as symbolic.
As NYC sets its sights on becoming a gambling mecca, Vegas is struggling to draw visitors. It has recorded a sharp drop in tourism and spending in recent months.
Harry Reid International Airport in Vegas saw 4.9 million passengers arrive and depart in October - an 8.9 percent drop compared to October 2024.