New York’s Latest Real Estate Power Player? Mets Owner Steve Cohen

Not every professional baseball owner is a personality in their hometown.

Sometimes they have to escape a negative image. Yankees partisans famously second-guessed — and by and large loathed — George Steinbrenner. Few Reds fans had anything good to say about Marge Schott. Low-profile is often better. Who owns the Colorado Rockies? We don’t know, either. And that’s a good thing.

But Steve Cohen is taking a different approach.

Not only is he a fixture at Citi Field, pumping Juan Soto up before the game, or embracing Francisco Lindor after a victory, but we can think of few figures who have tried to remake an entire kingdom around a baseball team.

Nearly five years after purchasing a New York Mets franchise he grew up rooting for, Cohen is taking a big swing that could soon position him as a formidable figure in Queens real estate.

The Major League Baseball owner in partnership with Hard Rock International submitted one of eight proposals for three downstate casino licenses set to be awarded later this year, and has gone all in against formidable odds to try and make his $8 billion project next to Citi Field a reality.

Dubbed Metropolitan Park, Cohen’s vision to transform 50 acres of asphalt next to the Mets’ home ballpark in northern Queens into a casino resort and entertainment district appeared dead in the water due to failed efforts to obtain necessary state legislation to build on designated parkland. State Sen. Jessica Ramos, whose district covers most of the area, refused to introduce Cohen’s request to the Senate due to her opposition to casino gambling in that area of Queens. 

The Metropolitan Park project got a lifeline from a pinch hitter, though, when state Sen. John Liu introduced parkland legislation in late March just as the Mets’ 2025 season was beginning. That legislation ultimately passed, and was signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul. 

With the parkland approval hurdle now clear, Cohen is rounding third base into the home stretch of his efforts to develop his casino resort project after first unveiling the proposal in late 2023. The longtime hedge fund manager, who founded Point72 Asset Management, has swung deep for the fences to gain local support for the casino resort since then by adding affordable housing, a mass transit station, 25 acres of green space and athletic fields to the proposal.

“Owning a team is a civic responsibility,” Cohen said at an introductory press conference on Nov. 10, 2020, four days after purchasing his beloved franchise and “that’s why my wife and I plan to invest in communities around Citi Field.” (Cohen declined to comment for this story.)

Liu, whose district covers a portion of where Metropolitan Park would be built, touted Cohen’s proposed Flushing Skypark aspect of the proposal, noting it would boost waterfront access to Flushing Bay through a pedestrian bridge with elements similar to Manhattan’s High Line. 

A spokesman for Metropolitan Park said there is a commitment to support Flushing Skypark if the Cohen-Hard Rock bid is awarded a license and, if it can’t be built, Cohen and company will provide $100 million to the Waterfront Alliance, an organization dedicated to improving Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

Many locals are rooting for the Mets owner.

Thomas Grech, president and CEO of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, credited Cohen’s outreach to the community as he sought to gain support for the development. Grech noted that Cohen’s strategy was in stark contrast to Amazon’s attempt to build a second headquarters in Long Island City before shelving the proposal in 2019. The e-commerce giant dictated its plans without much community input.

“I was part of the Amazon process years ago and that was a top-down approach,” Grech said “This approach has been completely opposite as it has been ground up with thousands of meetings with tens of hundreds of people engaged.”  

Cohen has also trumpeted a 450-unit affordable housing aspect of the project in partnership with Slate Property Group and announced in April. 

“We like this as a model going forward of how you actually bring economic development and affordable housing together and it’s something that could be replicated around the city and around the country,” said David Schwartz, Slate Property Group’s co-founder and principal (and lifelong Mets fan). “You know you hit the big leagues when you get a call from Steve Cohen — so we’re excited to be part of that team and we’re hoping that we have a World Series on top of it.” 

The various non-casino aspects of Cohen’s Metropolitan Park proposal are contingent on him winning one of those three bids to be awarded by the New York Gaming Facility Location Board. 

Jake Elghanayan, principal at TF Cornerstone, a prolific Queens developer that is not involved in Metropolitan Park, said that while he is “generally” opposed to casino gambling in New York City, he thinks Cohen’s project would bring many positives to the Queens area and stands out against the competitors. 

“I think this is the most compelling of the casino proposals because there are good synergies with the existing ballfield and it creates a real node of an entertainment district in a part of Queens that can use some economic development,” Elghanayan said. 

Cohen is toeing the rubber with competition across New York City for a chance to reshape the real estate around Citi Field.

The Manhattan casino proposals include Larry Silverstein in partnership with Rush Street Gaming and Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment on the far West Side; SL Green Realty, Caesars Entertainment and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in Times Square; and the Soloviev Group and Mohegan near the United Nations.

There are additional casino bids from Thor Equities, Saratoga Casino Holdings, the Chickasaw Nation and Legends in Coney Island, Brooklyn; and Bally’s at the former Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in the Bronx.

Resorts World New York City at Aqueduct Racetrack in Jamaica, Queens, and the MGM Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway in Westchester County are also looking to transform their current racinos with slot machines into Las Vegas-style casinos. 

Grech said Cohen has an edge against the other casino bidders due to large-scale support built up for the project in Queens — in contrast to steep opposition seen for full-blown casinos in New York City’s other boroughs, particularly in Manhattan. He added that even if Resorts World wins one of the three bids, its location in southeast Queens about 10 miles away should not impact Cohen’s chances.

“In Queens, we’re bigger than 15 states and would be the fourth-largest city in America, so I truly believe in different parts of the borough we can easily and happily handle two different gaming ventures,” Grech said, referring to population. “The complementary nature and the scale and size of this project, especially the way it’s been done from the ground up, to me is the most exciting thing.”

The rise of Cohen’s influence in New York City since buying the Mets for $2.4 billion from the Wilpon family faced an early bump in the road that underscored his past hedge fund ties. 

Cohen’s Point72 hedge fund joined forces with Ken Griffin’s Citadel in January 2021 to provide a $2.75 billion infusion into Melvin Capital, a hedge fund that suffered steep losses after shorting GameStop before retail investors forged an online movement to raise the company’s stock price. The Mets owner faced social media backlash for the move and briefly deactivated his Twitter account in January 2021, following threats against him and his family.

Not to mention that seven years prior to buying the Mets, another hedge fund Cohen founded — SAC Capital Advisors — pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading and was forced to pay a $1.8 billion federal fine. Cohen was not charged, but under the settlement was forbidden from managing outside money for a two-year period.

The hedge fund background of Cohen, who Forbes currently estimates has a net worth of $21.3 billion, has not affected his widescale popularity among Met fans. That’s largely because he’s willing to finance Major League Baseball’s highest payroll. The high acclaim Cohen has received as an MLB owner will presumably only help his chances to win approval for his casino resort and any future commercial real estate projects he may choose to embark on in Queens.

The initial partnership with Cohen and Hard Rock announced in early November 2023 came after a disappointing Mets season that finished up at 75-87 a year removed from winning 101 games. The Amazins have surged since the initial casino announcement, reaching the National League Championship series last year. The 2025 club, despite some early August struggles, is still positioned for another playoff berth.

The Mets averaged 39,229 attendance for the first 58 home games of the 2025 season compared to 29,484 in 2024 with fans rewarding Cohen for investing in the offseason. Cohen signed star slugger Juan Soto away from the crosstown rival New Yankees with a staggering $765 million contract over 15 years and re-signed fan favorite Pete Alonso to a $54 million two-year deal. 

In addition to his on-field success as an owner, Cohen has planted permanent philanthropic seeds in Queens throughout the casino proposal process. This included donating a $116.2 million grant last year through the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to create a 160,000-square-foot workforce training center at LaGuardia Community College’s Long Island City campus.

Such charitable efforts underscore the billionaire’s efforts to win support in the community for economic development initiatives he envisions, according to Grech, who remembers his initial call with Cohen in late 2020 about giving back. Northern Queens is now close to clinching a transformative real estate project due in large part to Cohen’s doggedness and targeted generosity.

“In his business life, he’s been very, very tenacious and in his efforts to get the casino project done he’s been equally as tenacious with a caring, giving mindset,” Grech said. “He’s been kind and generous to the small businesses and to the community at large and, at the end of the day, it’s probably one of the most awe-inspiring efforts by an individual and his foundation and his wife Alex to have an impact on a geographical area.” 

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.