Mets Owner Steve Cohen Gets Green Light for Casino in Queens

Watch Mets Owner Steve Cohen Gets Green Light for Casino in Queens - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

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00:00This is amazing in terms of the empire building story that Steve Cohen has out in Queens.

00:06He's got the Mets, right, Citi Field, obviously.

00:09He's got a soccer stadium now, and he's going to build a big gambling complex out there, right?

00:15That's right, and, you know, the job creation is incredible.

00:2017,000 construction jobs, 6,000 permanent jobs, and it's going to make, you know, tons of money

00:26when it opens, slated for 2030, $3.9 billion in tax revenue, generating $850 million in taxes.

00:34So that all sounds great.

00:37Of course, there will be victims because it's gambling, but I guess they would be doing it somewhere else if they weren't doing it here.

00:45Do people think it's better that we have it, you know, legal gambling in a casino rather than, I guess, in the basement of some shop downtown?

00:53Well, Steve Cohen faced some opposition from a local council member who tried to prevent it,

00:59but in the end, the community came together, the borough president, and people really wanted this casino.

01:05Isn't the idea, I have a guy on the inside, Joe, who knows everything about sports-adjacent stories,

01:10and he says, Steve Cohen has cleaned up the whole area around Citi Field.

01:14Like, there were a lot of chop shops there.

01:17It was really a dirtier or maybe a trashier neighborhood that he has now kind of leveled and is going to, I guess, gentrify, right?

01:27Isn't that good for Queens?

01:29This is what the people are saying, right, through their local politicians.

01:34He also wants to have a ferry come to Citi Field.

01:38This is something still in the works.

01:39We wrote that story a few months ago, but that could happen as well so that people can come straight to Citi Field to gamble on the ferry.

01:47So I guess I was going to ask what's next, and I guess the ferry is part of that answer, right?

01:53Traveling to and from this huge complex is currently a little bit difficult, and that would make it a lot easier.

01:59Yes, definitely.

02:00So what has to happen now?

02:03Because I'm imagining there will still be a lot of pushback against building this giant casino.

02:10So actually, this is just the board recommending that they get one of three sites.

02:16All three were actually picked.

02:18So Genting has theirs, and Bally's has theirs.

02:22All three of them will now have to just get a Gaming Commission license approved by December 31st.

02:30There's not going to be any problem with that, and I don't think there's going to be as much pushback as we might have thought.

02:35There were some protests, actually, just 10 people who got up and were upset about the decision.

02:41But apart from some Bally's pushback, perhaps, we're not seeing a major force coming out against these casinos.

02:49All right.