https://www.crainsnewyork.com/politi...june-breakdown
Casino lobbying spree continues as bidders await word from the state
NICK GARBER
July 27, 2023
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The deep-pocketed players waiting to bid for a lucrative New York City casino license are stuck in a holding pattern—but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to pay lobbyists to pitch their projects to local leaders.
The dozen known teams vying for one of three downstate casino licenses have paid at least $1.2 million combined to outside lobbyists during the latest two-month reporting period, between May and June, according to disclosures filed last week. During the first four months of the year casino contenders spent over $2.6 million on lobbying, as Crain’s previously reported.
Some real estate giants and gaming companies angling for a license have picked up new lobbyists in recent weeks, including Bally’s, for its Bronx proposal, and the developer Thor Equities for its Coney Island bid. A new entrant, Silverstein Properties, announced its West Side proposal last month and has already joined the lobbying fray, records show.
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The continued campaigning comes despite the state’s slow progress in actually opening up applications. The state Gaming Commission is still preparing answers to the first of two rounds of questions from prospective applicants, with no deadline set for the bids themselves. Sources watching the process said they expect applications to open during the first quarter of 2024.
“The general consensus is that it’s ‘hurry up and wait,’ ” said one lobbyist involved in the casino sweepstakes.
State senator Liz Krueger, a vocal skeptic of casinos who has three proposals in her Manhattan district, said lobbyists have continued to approach her in recent weeks.
“People keep showing up, sending me things that I don’t believe,” she said. “But there’s no role for the Legislature at this point.”
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It remains unclear when the state will convene votes by the six-person Community Advisory Committees that could reject any bid even before it reaches the state’s Gaming Facility Location Board, which will recommend the three winners. Equally uncertain is how the city will bring the casinos into compliance with local zoning—it could subject each proposal to the monthslong review process known as ULURP, or mass-legalize all future casinos through a citywide zoning-code tweak, as Mayor Eric Adams’ administration recently proposed.
Going with the mayor’s plan could appeal to City Council members, especially in Manhattan, who want to avoid the fraught act of agreeing to specific proposals, said the same lobbyist. On the other hand, lawmakers might be reluctant to give up the virtual veto power they command through ULURP.
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”The question is, is the City Council going to go for [Adams’ zoning text amendment]?” the lobbyist said in an interview. “If you take away ULURP, you take away the loaded gun.”
Many still assume that existing “racinos” in Yonkers and Queens will win two of the three new licenses. But Brian O’Dwyer, chair of the state’s gaming commission, sounded irked by all the speculation when he criticized news coverage of the process during a public meeting last month.
“Nobody has a leg up, nobody is in front, and no particular influence is going to bear on the ultimate decision,” O’Dwyer said.
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Cohen, the financier and New York Mets owner, continues to dwarf his competitors’ lobbying spending as he pursues his tricky Willets Point casino bid. The site would require not only the license itself but also state permission to build on a parking lot that is technically parkland.
Cohen’s casino group New Green Willets has paid a combined $237,522 to eight outside lobbying firms since May—on top of its own reported lobbying by New Green Willets employees, records show. Its top payees included Albany-based Dickinson & Avella, the law firm Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, and smaller contracts with lobbyists Marcos A. Crespo, Moonshot Strategies, Hollis Public Affairs, Lemma Strategies, RXR Development and the MirRam Group.
Cohen’s rumored gaming partner, Florida-based Seminole Hard Rock, has also paid $160,000 to lobbyists since May, including $90,000 to the consultancy Actum, $40,000 to Queens-based Green Book Strategies, and $30,000 to Tusk Strategies.
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Related has continued paying $20,000 monthly to the lobbyists at Manhattan firm Tonio Burgos. Their main target has been Hope Knight, president and CEO of Empire State Development, according to filings.
Wynn, for its part, dished out a combined $130,339 since May, including $60,000 to Empire Consulting Group, $40,000 of its own to Tonio Burgos, and smaller contracts with the law firm Kramer Levin and Mercury Public Affairs.
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Since the spring, the Rhode Island-based gaming company eyeing a 10-acre casino on the Trump Golf Links course in the Bronx has stopped doing business with two of its prior firms: Moonshot Strategies and Marcos Crespo. But it also picked up a new lobbyist: Elizabeth Velez, of the construction firm the Velez Organization, whom it paid $10,000 since May.
Bally’s has been in business with a total of six lobbyists since May. Its biggest payment, to the tune of $40,000, was to Steel Lion Strategies, the Brooklyn firm led by pastor Kirsten John Foy.
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Office landlord SL Green has kept up its contracts with BerlinRosen and Ostroff Associates to sell its proposal for a resort-casino within the 54-story tower at 1515 Broadway in Times Square. The company is also maintaining its $7,500-a-month contract with gay rights activist Allen Roskoff—amounting to $85,000 in lobbying dollars since May.
Frank Carone, the former chief of staff to Mayor Adams, joined SL Green’s bid in February to work on a “community engagement hiring plan” with law firm Greenberg Traurig, but vowed he would not serve as a lobbyist in accordance with city rules. Indeed, although Greenberg Traurig is a listed lobbyist for SL Green, it has not reported any work on the casino project.
Vegas-based partner Caesars has continued its own work with the public relations firm Bolton-St. Johns, which most recently targeted Midtown Assembly member Tony Simone, records show. (Third partner Roc Nation Entertainment has not reported any lobbying spending.)
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The development company Soloviev Group linked up with Mohegan to pursue a hotel-casino on a long-empty site near the United Nations. Soloviev has not reported any explicit casino lobbying, but it has paid $50,000 since May to Constantinople & Vallone to lobby city and state officials on a “land use project” at the same First Avenue site where the casino would go.
Mohegan, meanwhile, doled out $40,000 to lobbying firm Yoswein, whose listed target is the office of city Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.
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Thor Equities has paid Albany lobbyist Patricia Lynch Associates $50,000 since May to present its four-way vision for a casino just off the Coney Island boardwalk to more than a dozen state lawmakers—several of whom represent Brooklyn.
Thor also has a new contract, registered in May, with Brooklyn consultants Bender Cantone, while gaming partner Saratoga Casino Holdings has a $10,000-a-month deal with Albany lobbyists Featherstonhaugh, Wiley & Clyne. No lobbying spending has been reported by the bid’s other partners: the Chickasaw Nation and the hospitality firm Legends.
Krueger said lobbyists for the Coney Island bid caught her attention by arguing that it would be a waste to award licenses to the existing racetrack casinos. She said they argued that the three licenses should go instead to places that could benefit more from a huge influx of gamblers.
“They’re already so big and making so much money that it’d almost be a waste of a license to just let them get even bigger—it won’t even draw in new people,” Krueger said, summarizing the lobbyists’ argument against Resorts World in Queens and Empire City in Yonkers.
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Silverstein Properties already had a contract with Albany lobbyists Catalyst Government Relations by the time the developer announced its proposal in June for a two-tower casino, hotel and apartment complex on 11th Avenue. Now, Catalyst’s lobbying focus has been shifted to the casino project—lobbying five Manhattan officials at the city and state levels as part of its $10,000-a-month contract, records show.
In late June, Silverstein inked a separate $5,000-a-month contract with Jordan Barowitz, the former Durst spokesman who left ast year to start his own consultancy. Barowitz’s targets include Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and Assembly member Simone.
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Vornado, which has slowed new development amid falling demand, has said almost nothing publicly about the plan it floated in January to build a casino across from Penn Station on the former site of the Hotel Pennsylvania. Although Vornado has done business with at least five outside lobbying firms this year, none has reported any explicit casino work.
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Las Vegas Sands, which wants a casino on the present-day site of Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, has paid a combined $115,000 since May to the firms Brown & Weinraub, Ten Key Strategies and the Parkside Group.
In addition, the two slot-machine racetracks that are considered front-runners for licenses have continued their lobbying pushes.
Genting, the Malaysian operator of Resorts World at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, dished out $90,000 since May to Patrick Jenkins & Associates to lobby state lawmakers and the governor’s office about a downstate casino license. Genting paid $30,000 to Bolton-St. Johns to target Molly Schaeffer and Rachel Atcheson, staffers in Mayor Eric Adams’ office, regarding a license. (Genting has contracts with five other lobbying firms, but their filings did not specify whether their work involved a new casino license.)
Finally, MGM Resorts, which operates the existing Empire City Casino in Yonkers, has paid $10,000 to the Westchester firm DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr to lobby members of the Yonkers city government about a “building expansion and construction” of a casino. (The company contracts with three other firms, including top New York City Hall lobbyist Kasirer, though those companies do not specify work on a downstate license.)
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