Tiffany Hansen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Tiffany Hansen, host here in the WNYC newsroom filling in for Brian today. We are turning to casinos.

On Tuesday hedge fund billionaire and Mets owner Steve Cohen announced that he's thrown his hat in the ring for a downstate casino license in New York. The proposal would convert 50 acres of parking lots that surround Citi Field into an entertainment complex that would cost somewhere around $8 billion. Cohen is one of nineish contenders vying for only three licenses to operate a casino in New York City. He's reportedly the most aggressive, having already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbyists.

Joining us now to talk about what Cohen is envisioning next to Citi Field as well as community concerns and where the State is in this long process of approving these casino licenses, is Nick Garber, politics reporter at Crain's New York Business. Hi, Nick.

Nick Garber: Hi, Tiffany. Thanks for having me.

Tiffany Hansen: Absolutely. Listeners, we want you in this conversation, of course. Have you been hearing all about these casino proposals? Do you live in and around New York City, maybe in a community that would be impacted by these proposals, Times Square, Bronx, Willets Point, right where the Citi Field proposal is? What would a casino mean to you and your community? Jobs, traffic? Call us with your concerns, comments, or questions, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can also text that number or you can always tweet us- I don't know, do we still say tweet, formerly known as Twitter, @BrianLehrer.

All right. Nick, let's get into it. I want to talk a little bit about who builds what, where, when in a minute, but first, let's just talk about this news about Steve Cohen. Tell us who he is. We know he's a hedge fund manager. What does he want to do here, and why?

Nick Garber: Steve Cohen is, as you said, a hedge fund billionaire, but more to the point here, he's the owner of the New York Mets as of a few years ago. What he wants to do is build a casino or, as he calls it, a sort of entertainment complex right next to Citi Field on basically the parking lot. That's the former side of Shea Stadium just to the west.

It's been known for months that he's wanting to do this. He hasn't really been shy about it. In fact, he spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on lobbyists and various other public influence campaigns, but this week he finally officially went public with it and unveiled a site plan of what he's trying to do and says it will be an $8 billion investment, create thousands of jobs, et cetera. Now, all eyes are on the State, which is running the process that will award, ultimately, three downstate casino licenses.

Tiffany Hansen: We're talking about those 50 acres of parking lots that surround Citi Field. They're technically parkland. This isn't just a straightforward process of like, "Hey, here's a great plan. Let's do it."

Nick Garber: Exactly.

Tiffany Hansen: What does he have to do to convert this if he does actually get the license?

Nick Garber: Essentially, Steve Cohen has a harder- a more uphill battle than all of the other people vying for these licenses because in addition to winning the license in the first place, he has to get the State Legislature and the City Council to both pass resolutions or bills, so-called alienating the parkland basically saying-- to be clear, it doesn't look like a park. It's a parking lot, but due to the historical quirk, it's considered part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is across the street.

They need to say he's allowed to build on it. That is a big part, I think, of why he has spent so much money and so much time lobbying because he needs to get both City and State officials to get on his side, at least to the point of alienating the parkland.

Tiffany Hansen: I do want to dig into that process in a second, but before I leave the environments around Citi Field here, yes, it's not a park. It's parking lots. What's happening there now?

Nick Garber: The casino site, it is a parking lot, as we were saying. The previous Mets owners, Fred Wilpon, I think had a similar attempt to build something on it, not a casino, but a complex of some sort, and that produced a court ruling that said definitively no, it's parkland, and the only way to build on it is to get this legislature to pass the bill. That's what's happening on the west side of Citi Field.

Interestingly, on the east side of Citi Field, on Willets Point, a separate development is going up that's led by the City that's going to produce housing and a new soccer stadium for New York City FC, one of the MLS clubs here in New York.

That's created some intrigue between Steve Cohen and the City there because Steve Cohen is using his leverage to say the soccer stadium will not be allowed to- he won't let them use the Mets parking lots unless the City Council gets moving on this park alienation bill. That's what Katie Honan, reporter at The City, has done a great job writing about. That's added even more intrigue to this development plan.

Tiffany Hansen: Clarify that for me. This city-led development, including the New York City Football Club, it's set to go forward and this would just be alongside that, or is this an either/or?

Nick Garber: Exactly.

Tiffany Hansen: Okay. All right.

Nick Garber: They're separate. They're on each of the separate sides of Citi Field. East side is where the City is doing this soccer stadium and housing plan, and then to the west side is the land that Steve Cohen owns and wants to build a casino on.

Tiffany Hansen: I would love to bring some callers into this. Callers, we know you have opinions about casinos. We're talking with Nick Garber, politics reporter at Crain's New York Business, about the news we heard this week about billionaire hedge fund Mets owner, Steve Cohen, wanting to build a casino near the Mets stadium. How about we talk with Bernard in Brooklyn Heights? Good morning.

Bernard: Yes, good morning. Thank you. There's so many things I would like to say, but I'll try to be concise here. There's an organization called Stop Predatory Gambling. It's a national organization, which has put out a lot of research on this industry. First of all, the idea of encouraging people to gamble responsibly. There's something like 10% of the people that go to the casinos account for 80% of the gambling. If people out there gambled responsibly, this industry would not survive.

The other thing is just the motivation of state governments in this is that they get to raise enormous amounts of money [inaudible 00:06:55] don't require them to [inaudible 00:06:57] base money on the wealthy and whatnot. It's just so sad in many ways.

I know this may sound hyperbolic, but the idea of having more economic activity-- If we allowed bullfighting in New York City that people could gamble on, that would simulate jobs as well. People would say, "Well, that's inhumane." If you don't think gambling addiction is inhumane, I think you should maybe try to get some people whose families have been ruined by gambling addiction, which is very much out there. I'll leave it there. There's many more things I'd like to say, but I know you have other callers.

Tiffany Hansen: Appreciate the call, Bernard. Thanks so much for calling The Brian Lehrer Show. I want to just get another quick call in with an opposite viewpoint here. David in Harlem, good morning.

David: Hi. My name is David. I grew up in Citi Field area and I just wanted to respond to the caller and say that it's not fair to characterize gambling as something that will deteriorate all community. If we go by that logic we'd have knocked down or banned alcohol. It's all about being responsible at the end of the day.

Growing up in Queens and being a Mets fan, Citi Field and Shea Stadium, the area around just is so desolate, and I think it's important that we continue to develop.

I just don't understand that progressives are always so against development, things that will bring more revenue to the city and improve our infrastructure. I think this project is very exciting and it'll bring a new dimension to New York that will bring revenue from all over the world, and that's what we want. We want people to continue to spend more money here, so that we can continue to grow.

Tiffany Hansen: David, thanks for the call. Nick, David could pretty much make a commercial for the state at this point, who argues that as our previous caller, Bernard, mentioned, there's a lot of money to be made in fees. There's a lot of development that could happen. Also, David bringing up the point that a lot really has not happened in those parking lots for a very long time and development would be welcome. That's the viewpoint that a lot in the community share. I'm just wondering how we gauge, as these proposals are considered with all of the various committees, how do we gauge that community input?

Nick Garber: Yes, absolutely. Well, community input is going to actually have a huge role in deciding who ultimately gets one of each of these three licenses. The way that the State has set up this review process is, once the bids are actually in, probably sometime next year, there are going to be these six-person panels created to review each of the bids. They're going to be composed of local City Council members, State Assembly members, State Senators, people from the neighborhood who will either represent themselves or appoint their own members to vote on each of these bids.

Then a bid needs two-thirds of each of those councils to vote for it so that it can have a chance of getting approved. All that is to say the community is really going to have sort of a veto power over each of these proposals, which I think has led a lot of folks to think that some of the outer borough plans, including Steve Cohen's, might have a stronger chance of getting approved than the I think five that are being proposed from Manhattan, which are flashier and are being proposed by even the biggest real estate names like SL Green, Silverstein Properties, but in a way that might have a weaker argument for economic development because you can't quite argue that Times Square needs a casino to be a vibrant place, whereas Coney Island, which is having another one of the sites of these casino proposals, it really would be transformed, especially during the offseason by a casino.

I think that's part of the intrigue here as well is whether these proposals outside of Manhattan will have a better chance of getting through these local panels.

Tiffany Hanssen: Just to be clear, Nick, the proposals that are being considered for Manhattan, they do go through a different process, right, than as you've been saying, than the proposals for the surrounding area like Westchester, Long Island, and not to mention upstate, which has already happened, but there is a special process for Manhattan proposals.

Nick Garber: I'm not sure what you're referring to the process for--

Tiffany Hanssen: Don't Manhattan proposals in particular face opposition? Elected officials in Manhattan hold a veto power over these?

Nick Garber: Sure. The veto power is the same for the outer borough proposals and upstate ones at Westchester and Long Island, but I think it is true that the Manhattan elected officials, folks like State Senator Liz Krueger, Brad Hoylman, who both represent parts of Midtown in the east side, they are more outwardly opposed to even the concept of a casino than I think most outer borough legislators are at this point. I think that's another reason to be a little wary of the Manhattan bids.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right. There's not any real difference between the way these things are all being considered. It's just--

Nick Garber: Yes.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right. Got it. I do want to talk about this revenue generation, officials saying that there's going to be a lot of tax revenue generated from this. How will these casinos be taxed? If we know, do we know how that tax revenue will be used?

Nick Garber: Yes, to some extent we do. The first thing that's going to happen is to even submit a bid, you have to pay I believe it's $1 million, an application fee, essentially just to be considered. Then each of the three winners have a license, assuming that there will be three licenses awarded, will have to pay $500 million in licensing fees, so that'll be a total of 1.5 billion. All of that is going to go straight to the MTA. That was decided in the most recent state budget cycle. That's part of why the MTA is financing after being really rocky for a while is now looking a lot better for the next few years because they're going to have all this casino money.

Then on top of that $1.5 billion, there's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars every single year for the foreseeable future, that the State will collect from these downstate casinos. The formula that they set up also in this last state budget was about half of that is going to go to the MTA, and the rest will be divided between education funding, which was supposed to be the original recipient of basically all of this casino money, and also property tax relief, although the exact meaning of that I think is a little hazy. So yes, MTA and then local government, State government is going to be who collects these tax revenues so it'll be a huge windfall. That's why the state is doing this in the first place. It's just a tremendous amount of money.

Tiffany Hanssen: Nick, I just want to get back to our callers here. We've had Nandua in Astoria waiting for us. Good morning, Nandua, welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Nandua: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I had a quick question about how did the parkland become under private control in the first place because that was parkland and that it's under Steve Cohen's control. That was actually my main question as to why isn't there any housing? Why won't the City require housing instead for any of these casino proposals because that's the desperate need?

I will also say I come from a viewpoint that casinos are really junk economics. They really don't produce anything. You have a revenue stream, but there's a lot of other things you could do with a billion dollars.

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, thank you for that. Nandua touches on a couple of things here that I want to get to. One is that we don't really see the tax revenue that is being predicted. I want to get to that in a second here, Nick, but also this question of housing. The City-led development project for the area around Citi Field does include affordable housing. That is on a separate parcel of land on one side of the field, and it would not be-- Well, may or may not be impacted by Cohen's proposal.

Nick Garber: Yes, that's right. The City is pushing a pretty significant infusion of affordable housing on that east side property next to Citi Field. It's a valid point to raise, if we should expect or folks should demand that Steve Cohen also put housing in his side of the plan. I think the basic answer is that the city can't force a private landowner to build anything there. Even though it is a park, I believe that the setup is that Steve Cohen leases it from the City, and so that's the situation.

I assume he decided it was in his economic interest, rather than build housing to build this even more lucrative casino. In addition to the casino, I think we've talked about if he succeeds, there will be also a food hall, a hotel, a live music venue. It's really this big flashy complex that he wants to build.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, the other point that Nandua brought up was that a lot of these casinos are underperforming in terms of tax revenues. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said in August that the upstate casinos, which already have their license up operating have underperformed. They projected that the four upstate casinos would generate somewhere around $60 million in annual revenue. What happened instead?

Nick Garber: Yes, they generated less revenue than expected and I think that that's something that's been seen in other parts of the country. It's a pretty well-known phenomenon that casinos don't always live up quite to the loftiest projections that are given for them. I don't think anyone thinks that a New York City casino would be a flop. It would be such a transformative thing for a region that's never really had gambling, and just given the population density here, the fact that the New York City is a tourist Mecca, I think it's safe to say that they'll generate obscene amounts of money. Whether they meet the full potential and the forecasts so that an individual casino here could get about $2 billion in revenue each year, whether that's the case, it's unclear because I think part of what experts say is that casinos suffer from a loss of interest. After they initially open, a lot of people flock to them, but then over time, they just might turn to other things.

E-gambling, or the rise of esports betting, I think is a threat to these brick-and-mortar casinos. Then there's also this question of proximity to other casinos as more Native American reservations open them, whether that has a downward effect on revenues in the other casinos that are open. I think there's a lot of reasons to think that the loftiest projections might not hold up.

Tiffany Hanssen: Well, I would like to get back to talking about what community members and people who live around these casinos think about all of these various proposals and the possibility of having a casino in their area. I want to take a call now from Gil in Manhattan. Gil, Good morning. Welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Gil: Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. My brother, so family, and I'm over there frequently, live right across the street from Flushing Meadow Park. We love the park, go there a lot. Sometimes go to the tennis matches, but what I'm hearing is so much about revenue generation and job creation. Even the last statement about an entertainment and live music that's already happening in that area. The neighborhood is not happy with the amount of noise.

The actual family members and community people and shop owners do not benefit from these big items. The generation of the revenue goes back into the State, these billions of dollars back into the City, and doesn't actually help the community which is vibrant, multicultural. That park is phenomenal for what it does for the community. I'm not seeing the resources here with this creation for just bigger, better, more money, but not for corona. Thanks so much.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you, Gil, for the call. Nick, I'm wondering how these community viewpoints are being heard by folks who are making the decisions. If there's a big community outcry against a particular proposal, I'm hoping that's not ignored.

Nick Garber: I think it's safe to say that elected officials are aware. In particular, I think the main character in all of this is Jessica Ramos, who's the state senator who represents much of that area and the surrounding area. She has very publicly said she is not-- She hasn't said she is against it per se, but she is very much withholding her support. Her counterpart in the State Assembly, however, Jeffrion Aubry, more or less is supportive or at least has done the thing that Steve Cohen wants, which is he's introduced a bill that would alienate the parkland, but of course, with the legislative process, you need both houses to pass it. Jessica Ramos has very much withheld her support.

There's really no reason for her to come out and support it at this juncture anyway, because the bids haven't been submitted yet. She has every political reason to extract as much as she possibly can out of this extremely wealthy person. I think that's very much what she said publicly, and I think she's hosted lots of town halls. The Local Queen's publications have written quite a bit about these. She said she's hosting another one, I think next week, now that the full plan is out there. I think it's safe to say that the voices of community members are being heard to some extent. Of course, it remains to be seen how much they'll be able to influence the final project.

Tiffany Hanssen: We do have a couple of texts here. I just want to get in. "There should be a rule that the affordable housing is built first. We've seen all too many times that affordable housing is built last and then delayed." Someone mentioning Yonkers. Yonkers, I've heard it called a race. The Yonkers Raceway and Belmont are not even miles from New York City. Neither have been transformative or generated billions. Lots and lots of public opinion about this. I'm wondering, Nick, if we can expect to have any decision. I think what we heard was on the early side, it might be by the end of this year, is that--

Nick Garber: Definitely not. I think it's very unlikely that there'll be any kind of decision this year. Maybe by the end of next year. Where we're at in the process right now is no applications have been submitted. The way that it's set up is the State Gaming Commission is going to answer two rounds of questions that the casino applicants send in. Just procedural stuff about what they should and shouldn't submit in these hundreds of page-long applications.

The State has answered the first of those two rounds of questions. They said that it was supposed to take them about, I think it was three weeks, and instead, it took them six months because they got hundreds of questions.

Now the second round, the State is answering those questions as we speak. Once they answer them, which if it's a similar timeline will happen in the spring sometime, then the applicants will have 30 days to submit their application. Then from there, I don't think there's been a timeline set on how long the review process is going to take, but maybe sometime next year, we could get answers.

Tiffany Hanssen: TBD.

Nick Garber: TBD.

Tiffany Hanssen: All right, we'll leave it there, Nick. Thanks so much. Nick Garber is a politics reporter at Crain's New York business. Thanks so much for coming on The Brian Lehrer Show and talking to us about casinos.

Nick Garber: Thanks for having me.

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