Otherwise known as “Site 5″, the land, where the Deutsche Bank building once stood, could be sold for upwards of $200 million. In the new accord the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation must honor a 2006 agreement by handing over Site 5 to the Port Authority, in exchange for the title to the 8 acres the museum and memorial take up on the World Trade Center site, Reuters reports. Read More
Aqueduct Resorts World, the Queens racino owned by Genting Malaysia, has been New York State’s biggest tax-revenue producer while also doling out the most winnings among the nine racinos in the state, The NY Post reports.
The racino paid out $3 billion to the users of its video lottery terminals (VLTs) of the $3.178 billion in wagers it collected between April through the middle of June, according to financial reports filed with the state Lottery Division.
Aqueduct Resorts World pocketed the leftover $178 million, with nearly 60 percent of that revenue going back to the state. Read More
Casino Gambling in the Empire State
One would assume that owning two racinos would result in handsome profits for Jeffrey Gural.
Yet despite reports that the racino at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens made $57.5 million in May, outpacing Mohegan Sun as the country’s top slot-machine moneymaker, the Newmark Grubb Knight Frank chairman’s investment in Tioga Downs and Vernon Downs has not been so lucrative, in part because of unfavorable locations and a high tax rate.
“One problem I have is one racino is five miles away from an Indian casino that has table games—that was a terrible decision,” Mr. Gural said late last week. “My other racino is in Tioga County in a town of 1,000 people. Obviously, if you have a great location like Aqueduct and Yonkers, you’d make a lot of money. But the bulk of the money is going into state taxes.” Read More
With New York Governor Andrew Cuomo fixin’ to legalize gambling in the Empire State, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz said that Coney Island, “America’s Playground,” should be considered as one of the seven non-Indian casino sites throughout the state.
In an op-ed in today’s New York Daily News, Mr. Markowitz said that building a casino in Coney Island “fits the bill in every way imaginable.” Read More
A committee comprised of influential and powerful members from the real estate world that is closely aligned with Governor Andrew Cuomo received a $2 million contribution from The New York Gaming Association, a lobbying group with ties to Genting Bhd. and other gambling interests, according to published reports.
The donation to The Committee to Save New York was made last December, weeks before Gov. Cuomo had argued for legalizing gambling in New York state. It was also made before Gov. Cuomo announced an agreement had been made between the state and Genting to develop a $4 billion “racino” at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Read More
A select group of supporters of Governor Andrew Cuomo, 20 in number, raised around $17 million to help support the Governor’s agenda, as was first reported by The New York Times Sunday.
The group, called the Committee to Save New York, provided money to help support Governor Cuomo’s first 18 months in office, even funding a pro-Cuomo media campaign to help counter a barrage of anti-Cuomo advertisements funded by labor unions. Read More
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has seven plots of land across 4 boroughs for developers to ply their wondrous trades on, and the agency is fielding RFPs from the biggest and the boldest in an attempt to bump up revenue while scaling back overhead, the city agency announced yesterday. Read More
