Casino Dreams Dashed For Final Manhattan Bid, Sole Brooklyn Proposal
The rejections keep coming for developers who spent years cobbling together proposals for multibillion-dollar casino projects in New York City.
A community board voted 4-2 Monday morning to reject the $11.2B Freedom Plaza proposal from developer Soloviev Group and its gaming partner, Mohegan. The binding rejection was the third in the past week for a Manhattan casino bid, following votes last week that took pitches from SL Green in Times Square and Silverstein Properties near Hell's Kitchen off the table.
Freedom Plaza was proposed on Soloviev's 6.3-acre undeveloped site to the south of the United Nations Plaza along the East River. The developer planned a 295K SF casino, more than 1,200 hotel rooms, an art gallery, a multistory food hall, a spa, a public park and more than 1,400 parking spaces on the site.
It also said it would build more than 1,000 apartments, initially promising that half would be permanently affordable but last week pledging to designate all the units as affordable housing.
“We are proud of our partnership with Mohegan and the vision that informed this project that would have revitalized Midtown East,” Soloviev Group CEO Michael Hershman said in a statement. “Manhattan is the undisputed capital of the world, and it deserved a fully integrated resort that would have attracted visitors while serving the needs of its community.”
The Soloviev Group bid was the last remaining proposal in Manhattan. The sole proposal from Brooklyn, from developer Thor Equities, also appears doomed.
Three appointees to the community advisory committee to consider Thor’s bid on Coney Island have signaled they plan to reject the proposal at a vote scheduled for the end of September, Crain’s New York Business reported. A bid can survive only two no votes from the six-member CAC.
Thor, along with Saratoga Casino Holdings and Chickasaw Nation, proposed The Coney, a 1.4M SF, $3.4B project that would include a 2,400-seat entertainment venue, a 92K SF convention center, a 500-room hotel, 20 restaurants and an acre of public space. Thor already secured a $2.3B development commitment from casino REIT Gaming and Leisure Properties to fund the project.
“The Coney has failed to prove itself as a public good and will not improve conditions for the Brooklynites who call Coney Island home,” Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said on social media Monday morning.
September is make-or-break for the eight developers who submitted their proposed multibillion-dollar developments this summer for three available downstate casino licenses, seven of which were in the five boroughs and another just across city limits in Yonkers.
This month, individual CACs are voting on the proposals. The seven city CACs are made up of appointees from Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, plus the relevant borough president, city council member, state assembly member and state senator.
A five-member CAC, with appointees from the governor, state lawmakers, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and Westchester County Executive Kenneth Jenkins, will vote on the MGM Empire City bid on Thursday.
The Adams administration on Friday — after SL Green and Silverstein's bids were rejected — released an economic analysis of the seven casino bids within city limits, which makes recommendations for each proposal to add more infrastructure and public space considerations.
If a bid gets two-thirds of the CAC votes, it will then head to the state’s Gaming Facility Location Board, which is chosen by Hochul and plans to make a final decision in December.
MGM's $2.3B bid to expand its Yonkers racino is expected to be granted a license, as is Malaysian giant Genting Group for a $5.5B expansion of its racino at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, Politico reported.
That leaves just two other possibilities: Billionaire New York Mets owner Steve Cohen's $8B proposal in partnership with Hard Rock International next to Citi Field and Bally’s Corp.’s proposal to build a casino on parkland in the Bronx.
Cohen's bid, dubbed Metropolitan Park, includes a casino, 450 affordable housing units, a live music venue, conference space and a hotel to be built on existing parking lots in the Flushing Meadows–Corona Park area of Queens.
Bally's hopes to build a gaming facility with a 2,000-person entertainment center, a 500-room hotel and a spa alongside a golf course that it took over from The Trump Organization in 2024 for $60M. The Rhode Island-based entertainment firm agreed to pay the president's business another $115M if it won one of the three casino licenses, The New York Times reported in April.
The Bronx proposal has also been at the center of a tug of war between Adams and the city council. Adams has been particularly vocal about support for a casino, telling NY 1 Monday morning that he wasn’t sure why the two proposals on Manhattan’s West Side had been voted down last week.
“Casinos can bring jobs. It can bring stability, tourism,” he said. “I was surprised at some of the negative votes.”
