Westchester, NYC and Long Island will get 3 casinos among them. Everyone wants a piece. It's unlikely NYC gets more than 2, and might only get 1 of the 3.
The state will decide, and created a commission to handle it -- the type of commission you create in order to facilitate and hide patronage and corruption.
Cohen wants one of the casinos but faces competition from locations at Aqueduct, Coney Island, Manhattan and elsewhere in the city. His problem is that besidesbribing convincing the state commission, he needs to get special permission to build anything on the parking lots, which technically are parkland. The land under and around Shea Stadium used to be part of Corona Park, and it took special legislation in both NY state and NYC to build a stadium there, and that legislation passed back in the early 1960s basically allow for a baseball stadium and parking. Demolishing Shea, building Citi, and shifting the parking around was authorized under that old legislation. But anything else needs new authorization. This was litigated in 2017 when the Wilpons wanted to develop the parking lots into a mall and residential and the Wilpons lost. That's why Cohen needs the city council to act. Other potential casino sites don't have this extra obstacle.
So Cohen is strong-arming the city council to pass their enabling bill, because he has leverage. But then his problem is he has less juice with the state officials, who also are responsible for horse racing, which is a dead industry being kept alive solely by government subsidy because it's a massive source of patronage and corruption. One big source of the horse racing subsidy is a cut of the revenue from the racino at Aqueduct. But Aqueduct is closing when Belmont gets remodeled (see article linked earlier) and so themob captains state legislators who oversee racing, and conveniently are in charge of the casino process, favor a full casino at the soon-to-be former Aqueduct site so they can keep the subsidies flowing.
The state will decide, and created a commission to handle it -- the type of commission you create in order to facilitate and hide patronage and corruption.
Cohen wants one of the casinos but faces competition from locations at Aqueduct, Coney Island, Manhattan and elsewhere in the city. His problem is that besides
So Cohen is strong-arming the city council to pass their enabling bill, because he has leverage. But then his problem is he has less juice with the state officials, who also are responsible for horse racing, which is a dead industry being kept alive solely by government subsidy because it's a massive source of patronage and corruption. One big source of the horse racing subsidy is a cut of the revenue from the racino at Aqueduct. But Aqueduct is closing when Belmont gets remodeled (see article linked earlier) and so the
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