The sudden headlines of gaming bids in Orange County and other Catskill counties have given way to the slow process of application reviews and a one day Public Hearing set by the New York State Gaming Commission Facility Location Board.
The NY Gaming Commission has set a day of public testimony on casinos for Tuesday, September 23, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in Poughkeepsie, NY, more than an hour drive for many residents whose communities have casino applications, such as Tuxedo, Woodbury and South Blooming Grove.
The Town of Tuxedo will hold a special Board Meeting Monday, August 18, at 7:30 p.m. to adopt a Final Scoping Document for the proposed Sterling Forest Resort and casino. The Final Scoping Document will be used as a road map for the preparation of a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
According to Tuxedo Supervisor Mike Rost no public comments will be heard at the Monday meeting. Rost said in a letter updating the town’s progress on Sterling Forest Resort that public input has been incorporated into the Scoping Document and that “Once a Final Scoping Document is adopted, the intensive work of studying the proposed project and its potential impacts can begin.”
See some of the other ways Sterling Forest will work to protect the environment: http://t.co/6dqMdxriy4 #SupportSFR pic.twitter.com/0bpTZ4XjTy
— Sterling Forest (@SFRTuxedo) August 18, 2014
Meanwhile, Jesse McKinley and Charles V. Bagli had a sobering report published in The New York Times August 10 about the receding benefits of the great northeast gambling boom.
“He’s 15 years too late to the party,” said longtime gambling industry analyst Harold L. Vogel in the article about NY Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who pushed hard for gaming in the state as a means to “reverse the fortunes of economically stagnating regions like the Catskills.”
It seems everywhere McKinley and Bagli look, gaming returns are sagging while the east coast gaming Mecca itself, Atlantic City, has seen the lights go dim in the cavernous Revel casino, along with the closing of Trump Plaza, the Showboat and Atlantic Casino Club.
Any New York casinos will be in competition with New Jersey to the south, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and even Massachusetts — not to mention New York’s “five upstate Indian casinos offering table games and amenities like hotels, golf courses and conference centers, and nine horse racing tracks with slot machine parlors, known as ‘racinos.'”
Graphic of revenue from NY State casino operations, with the slots of Empire City Casino Yonkers Raceway and Resorts World New York City Casino generating the most income.
The article read like a cautionary tale that discussed “Cannabals and Victims” in New York’s fast-moving effort to deal purported gaming benefits to various communities.
The article raises the specter of dead-end low wage jobs, hidden public expenses such as safety and social services, declining industry slot revenues and employment numbers, and the white elephant in the room:
“The shiny new objects attract all of us as customers,” said Geoff Freeman, chief executive of the American Gaming Association. “The question is what happens when the ‘Grand Opening’ sign is taken down.”
