[NYguy]

Quotes from Steven Roth on Virnado’s potential casino bid…



https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-t...ings-call-tra/

Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript


By Motley Fool Transcribing
May 3, 2022

Steve Sakwa -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Steve, I was wondering if you could just comment a little bit more about your appetite and desire to still be part of a casino project or licensing agreement. If New York City were able to get one.

I'm just curious if you're looking to be part of the operations or you're looking to more be of a landlord. And if it's on the landlord side, how big of an integrated resort do you ultimately think the winning bid needs to be? Does it need to be hotel rooms and convention space? Or do you think it can just be a stand-alone casino kind of in the heart of Manhattan?

Steven Roth -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, some of the -- some of the answers to your questions are at the current time unknowable. This is going to be a political process and there are going to be government officials who are going to make these decisions. With respect to the idea of a casino, we are aggressively pursuing it as we should and as we must. And I've said in the last two letters I've written that we believe that the -- there are going to be three downstate licenses.

We believe that the best place for the third license, one goes to Yonkers, one goes to Aqueduct probably, although that might be contested as well. But we believe that the third license would be best served to go into Manhattan. When you think about it, Manhattan is the center of everything. It's the center of the hotel industry, the entertainment industry, the restaurant industry, the business industry the theater industry, etc.

And one of the anomalies is while it's the economic engine of New York by far, the voting population who is of interest and the political leadership, of course, is not necessarily in Manhattan. So that's an interesting thing. We are in the process of talking to multiple people as our -- and the casino industry operators are talking to multiple landowners. We are in the process of debating whether we would be just a land [Inaudible] and that -- well, just as an understatement, being a landlord or being part of the operation or being a hybrid, which is a landlord with a kicker or whatever.

So we're in the throes of thinking about and talking about and debating the financial arrangements. With respect to whether the winning bid, so to speak, would be a small isolated casino or an entire Las Vegas-style complex with hotel rooms, entertainment, food, etc., offerings, I don't know which is the right one, OK? We believe that we can pursue both of them.

We have multiple sites that we intend to bid with. And for example, if you just take the Penn District, what's in the middle of the Penn District, Madison Square Garden.

Madison Square Garden is the biggest and most important entertainment complex and certainly in the New York area and maybe far and wide. The interesting thing about Madison Square Garden is in addition to the teams, it has 220 dates a year of concerts. So it's the center of the music industry as well. And it sits on top of -- to our land is adjacent to Madison Square Garden and sits on top of the transportation network, which is interesting.

There's been some talk about Times Square, which is also interesting, and we have sites there. So this is early days, and we are exploring -- we're working very hard exploring all of the different options. And we expect to try to -- we will probably get a resolution as to what direction we are going to go in some time well before the end of the year. We -- I think I read one transcript somewhere that somebody thinks that this process is going to be over in the first quarter of next year.

I don't think it's going to be anywhere near over, that's going to take a lot longer than that. As it should. It's a deliberate process and it's important. So we believe that Manhattan is the right venue to get the third license.

We intend to compete aggressively for it. And one last thing. We think speed to market or speed of opening is going to be a very important determinant of the economics of the bidders. So if you have to build a new complex, and that could take three, five years or if you're retrofitting a building that could take one to one and a half years, there are billions of dollars difference in that calculation.