ALBANY – Mets owner and billionaire Steve Cohen scored a major win in his quest to build a casino at Citi Field on Tuesday when the state Senate voted 54-5 in favor of a bill to “alienate,” or reclassify, 50 acres of parkland as suitable for development.
The deal requires new parkland to be created nearby. Flushing's parkland will get a bike bridge — which critics call a bridge to nowhere.
The vote is the latest step in the state's effort to bring three casinos to the New York metropolitan area. In its bid to get one of those licenses, Cohen and Hard Rock International dreamed up “Metropolitan Park,” an $8-billion casino and entertainment complex with a 25-acre public park, food hall, retail, restaurants, redevelopment of the Mets-Willets Point subway station, and “improvements to roads and bike paths.”
Those improvements mean “Flushing Skypark,” a bike and pedestrian bridge “lined with recreational and congregate areas,” the developers said in a statement, that will connect Flushing from its western edge at 39th Avenue and College Point Boulevard to Willets Point on the other side of Flushing Creek.
Cyclists and pedestrians can currently cross the creek via bridges on Roosevelt Avenue or Northern Boulevard, but neither is appealing. The alienation bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Liu (D-Flushing) was in a bike crash involving truck debris on Northern Boulevard.
Cohen and Hard Rock claim Flushing Skypark will deliver “an environmentally sound and aesthetically pleasing connection for pedestrians and bicyclists,” transforming “a simple crossing into vibrant hubs that serve as flexible public spaces.”
On paper, new bike lanes and walkways sound good — but as members of Eastern Queens Greenway argued in a Streetsblog op-ed, the bridge would connect a part of Flushing with no protected bike lanes to an area whose future is unknown. Developers would have to give up land to connect to the bridge — a big if.
In March, the City Council approved, by a 41-2 vote, the zoning text and city map amendments required for the casino to move forward. Earlier this month, the state Assembly voted 134-11 to alienate the Citi Field parkland. The Senate vote on Tuesday was the final step before the casino bid goes to the State Gaming Commission before a June 27 deadline.
The Senate bill to turn the Citi Field parking lot — which is technically parkland — into a casino was introduced by Liu. Meanwhile, Sen. Jessica Ramos, whose district is on the other side of Citi Field from Liu’s, opposed the alienation bill.
The casino, she said on the Senate floor, was “not the kind of development that my community deserves.” Casinos “extract wealth from working class communities. They prey on addiction and often displace the very people they claim to uplift.”
Casinos generate revenue for their operators, she added, while “the neighborhoods around them often suffer from increased economic instability, public health concerns, and a rise in problem gambling.”
Reached after the vote, Liu said Flushing Skypark was his idea. He called it “a very big attraction in and of itself,” and not simply a thoroughfare.
Without the alienation, he said, the Mets would have rights to the parking lot/parkland parcel for at least another 80 years. And Flushing Skypark, he said, would “provide tremendous public amenities.”
If Cohen and Hard Rock get a casino license, they will be on the hook, at least on paper, for $100 million to improve Flushing Meadows Corona Park — even if Flushing Skypark is never built.
But Ramos laughed out loud when Streetsblog asked her about the “Flushing Skypark.” She called the $100 million “peanuts” for addressing repetitive flooding and decades of historic neglect. Last month, the Trump administration canceled nearly $200 million of grants for heavy rain management projects, including one in Corona.
She also noted that the renderings do not depict the many pieces of highway infrastructure around the proposed Metropolitan Park.
Then there is the question of whether Cohen will make good on his agreement. The developers have a contract with the Waterfront Alliance, which says they will pay $100 million for capital improvements to Flushing Meadows Corona Park even if the casino bid dies.
But Cohen has a long history of regulatory violations; his former hedge fund, S.A.C. Capital Advisors, paid $1.8 billion in penalties — the largest insider trading fine in U.S. history — though Cohen was never criminally indicted.
Liu has previously said that casino operators prey on poor Asian Americans. Asked about his support of a casino in a predominantly Asian part of Queens, he said he would prefer to ban gambling, but “that isn’t going to happen.”
One way or the other, he said, there would be three casinos in or around New York City — “a hop and skip away from my district.” At least in this deal, he says he believes, Flushing Meadows Corona Park will get infrastructure improvements.
In the Senate chamber, Ramos called out people “who call themselves champions for working people [yet] have remained silent when billions are at stake and public trust is on the line." She did not name names, but Liu and Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas supported the alienation. And Queens Borough President Donovan Richards supports the casino, too.
Another “nay” vote came from Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), who told her colleagues that she opposes government co-sponsored gambling.
“Just because you spend money,” she said, “doesn’t mean it's economic development.”
Clarification: An earlier version of this story suggested that the would-be casino developers are on the hook for the park improvements, but that is only the case if they indeed get their license. In addition, an earlier version suggested that Ramos specifically took aim at supporters of the casino. She may have been, but she did not name any of her colleagues.
