This rendering of Steve Cohen’s plans for a casino in Queens could soon be a reality.
Photo: Metropolitan Park

New York City has its casino winners: Barring any back-room high jinks or an act of God, we should soon see a casino at the Queens Aqueduct, the Bally’s golf club in the Bronx, and Steve Cohen’s megaproject next to Citi Field, where parking lots will be turned into parklets; concert halls; and a glassy, Hard Rock–branded tower. The results were a bit anticlimactic — there were three licenses to give, and only three contenders remained by the time the gaming board met on Monday, giving them all the green light. (The only drama came from a brief interruption by protesters, chanting “Shame on you!”)

A Bally’s-branded casino in the Bronx.
Photo: HKS

The Bronx casino will be welcome news to the president, who leased the land to Bally’s and is on track to get a $115 million bonus when the casino gets its full license. (Bally’s shares rose by 11.5 percent, per Bloomberg.) And Cohen, a hedge-fund manager and Mets owner, is another smiling billionaire this morning; his Metropolitan Park fended off an 11th-hour lawsuit from the organizers of the U.S. Open.

No slots will be played in Manhattan, where zero casinos won approval in earlier rounds of the licensing process, and Brooklynites will just have to dip over to the Aqueduct after a Coney Island project, which faced intense local opposition, also flopped.

A rendering of the plans from Resorts World to build a casino next to the Aqueduct.
Photo: Courtesy of Resorts World

This isn’t the last vote — but the full state commission is “expected to follow the board’s recommendations” when that vote happens later this month, per the New York Times. The onetime licensing fees from each casino are expected to bring in $1.5 billion for the state. As for claims from each of the winners about future tax windfalls, jobs, and other assorted benefits for the state? Well, that’s generally more of a gamble.

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