Caesars, Silverstein Manhattan Casino Bids Fail After Local Vote

(Bloomberg) -- Two bids to put casinos in Manhattan’s Times Square and undeveloped land on the West Side ended after community advisory committees rejected the projects in key votes Wednesday.

The West Side project, backed by Silverstein Properties, Rush Street Gaming and Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment, failed to secure the votes required to move ahead to the New York Gaming Facility Location Board. SL Green Realty Corp. and Caesars Entertainment Inc.’s bid for a Times Square casino lost their vote earlier Wednesday.

The losses mean that just one proposal for a Manhattan casino may remain in the competition among developers and casino operators to win as many as three gaming licenses in downstate New York. 

Support for a Manhattan casino has lagged — the Times Square casino, in particular, drew backlash from local community groups — despite the potential for billions of dollars in revenue. Altogether, eight proposals for casinos in the downstate region have been put forward.

Representatives for Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul were the only affirmative votes Wednesday. New York City Councilman Erik Bottcher, a member of the committee for the two projects voted on today, said in a statement that he would not support either bid.

“I believe casinos must clear a particularly high bar, requiring a uniquely strong degree of community buy-in before being sited in a neighborhood,” he said. “Despite extensive outreach by the applicants, that level of support has not materialized.”

Representatives for SL Green and Caesars didn’t return a message seeking comment.

SL Green and Caesars teamed up in 2022 and developed a plan to transform an aging office building into Caesars Palace Times Square, with a hotel, four restaurants and a theater on the ground floor. The casino would have generated an estimated $23.3 billion in gambling revenue over 10 years. But it drew opposition from owners of Broadway theaters, while community groups were concerned about the potential increase in crime, sanitation issues and traffic congestion. 

“This was a vote to protect the magic of Broadway,” Jason Laks, president of The Broadway League and a member of the No Times Square Casino Coalition, said in a statement. “A casino can go anywhere, but Broadway only lives here.”

Shares of SL Green fell 3.9% to $63.08 at 12:16 p.m. in New York after falling as much as 7.7% earlier, the steepest decline on an intraday basis since April. Shares of Caesars rose 1.4% to $25.93. 

An agitated SL Green chairman Marc Holliday confronted the committee after the vote, according to a video posted to X by a reporter at Crain’s New York Business.

“We met the standard and then some. The only one with courage to stand up is the governor and the mayor appointees, and everybody else runs and hides. Go run and hide,” Holliday said in the video. “What you did, the benefits you denied this community and this city and state, you have to live with that history forever.”

The Silverstein proposal for the $7 billion Avenir would have put a casino, 1,000-room luxury hotel with Hyatt Hotels Corp., restaurants, an art gallery and performance venue on a large plot of currently undeveloped land on 41st Street and 11th Avenue, just north of the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center. The developers also pledged to convert nearby office towers into more than 2,000 apartments to help ease housing shortages.

The project would have created more than 4,000 construction jobs and 5,000 permanent positions, the developers said.

“Obviously, we are disappointed that our West Side elected officials didn’t see a path forward for The Avenir project,” Dino Fusco, chief operating officer at Silverstein, said in a statement. “We are grateful to everyone who has supported this project and partnered with our team throughout this process and appreciate their confidence in our vision for the Far West Side.”

Earlier Wednesday, Avenir had asked for a delay in the vote, saying the advisory committee made a “significant request” late Tuesday night that the team wasn’t given the opportunity to address in time. The request came after the Avenir team spent the weekend responding to more than 20 questions regarding their application, handing in a 19-page response Monday evening, 24 hours before the deadline.

“This action taints the CAC process and today’s vote should be postponed,” the Silverstein-led bidders said in a statement.

Later this month, a committee will vote on Soloviev Group’s Freedom Plaza project, which would build an $11.2 billion development just south of the United Nations headquarters on the east side of Manhattan. If that fails to pass, the prospect of a Manhattan casino is over.

Two other bids for Manhattan casinos were dropped in recent months. Saks Global scrapped a pitch for a spot in midtown, while Wynn Resorts Ltd abandoned its bid with Related Cos. for a casino on the west side of Hudson Yards after failing to receive community support.

New York State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, whose representative was on the CAC for the Avenir project, said in an interview Wednesday that he is against Manhattan casinos. 

“Dropping a casino in the middle of a quality-of-life crisis will only exacerbate the situation, whether it’s traffic, illicit drug use, panhandling and other homelessness,” he said. “A casino doesn’t address any of those problems, it only makes it worse.”

Other contenders still awaiting their CAC votes include billionaire Steve Cohen’s project near Citi Field in Queens. All votes are due by end of September, and the licenses will be awarded in December.

--With assistance from Jeremy R. Cooke.

(Updates with vote on Silverstein casino project.)

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