All bets are not off at Nassau Hub

Daily Point

Table talk: Nassau OTB could reopen VLTs deal with Resorts World

Could gambling end up at the Nassau Hub after all?

The ongoing state process to award three downstate casino licenses could lead to video lottery terminals, or VLTs, being located in Nassau County.

But gambling at the Hub is not what Nassau officials or Republican Party leaders want to discuss right now ahead of the county and town elections. Timing is a tell.

A decade ago, then-County Executive Edward Mangano was unable to site within the county borders the 1,000 VLTs the state had awarded to Nassau, unlike the successful Suffolk effort to establish Jake’s 58 Casino in Islandia. Nassau OTB then made a deal to put the machines at Resorts World in Queens, in exchange for a steady annual revenue payment.

If Resorts World — now one of the more plausible contenders for one of three available downstate full-service casino licenses — wins, Nassau OTB could reopen the contract to operate Nassau’s designated 1,000 VLTs.

The agreement, reached in 2016, now provides Nassau with $31,410,185 annually, Chief Deputy County Executive Arthur Walsh told The Point. Walsh served as general counsel to OTB at the time of the deal. That contract directly contemplates what could happen if Resorts World wins a full casino license, calling it a "Material Beneficial Event." It’s defined specifically as "Genting procures a license and operates a ‘full-service casino’ " that increases gross gaming revenue by 20% for at least a year.

Resorts World has said in its casino license bid that it expects its gross gaming revenue to more than double by 2027. If that happens, the agreement says, "the parties shall negotiate in good faith" to reach a deal on a "commercially reasonable increase" in the royalty payments.

"If Nassau OTB has reason to believe that a Material Beneficial Event is likely to occur or has occurred, the parties shall meet to negotiate in good faith such an amendment," the deal says.

If they can’t come to a deal, Nassau OTB would have the right to either continue the current payments or terminate the agreement.

And that could open the door for VLTs to end up in Nassau County.

Body language is a tell, too. Last month, the Town of Hempstead approved zoning for the land surrounding Nassau Coliseum that would allow gaming as one of the potential uses. And the state environmental review completed by the county also contemplated gaming as a use, too.

"One has to wonder why, given that [Las Vegas] Sands backed out, Nassau and Hempstead still moved forward on approvals for ‘gaming’ at the site of the Hub," one source with knowledge of the state’s gaming industry speculated to The Point.

But in an interview, Walsh told The Point that putting VLTs at the Hub isn’t currently being contemplated.

"The OTB is committed to the agreement, as is Genting, and we are satisfied with the payments we receive," Walsh said. "There’s no reason to do anything other than live by the agreement."

But if Resorts World wins a full-service casino license, would Nassau change its tune?

"That would be totally speculative," Walsh said. "The license won’t be awarded until the end of the year. That’s not on the radar. It’s premature."

"If there’s the potential to get more [revenue], then we’ll discuss it then," he added.

In a statement to The Point, OTB president and Nassau Republican Party chair Joe Cairo voiced a similar sentiment.

"Nassau Regional Off Track Betting Corporation is satisfied with the agreement it has with Genting and it has no plans to relocate its VLTs to another location," Cairo said.

But the source with knowledge of the state’s gaming industry told The Point that VLTs and full casinos fall within different casino categories in state guidelines — and aren’t supposed to exist within the same facility. That would mean the full casino would replace the VLTs at Aqueduct, leaving Nassau as a potential option.

Meanwhile, Sands continues to hold an interim lease on the Coliseum site. Walsh told The Point that there are ongoing conversations with Sands regarding finalizing a longer-term lease. Sands, he said, is "coming up with an alternative plan" for the site.

"It’s incumbent upon them to come up with an alternative plan," he said.

When asked when that might happen, Walsh said, "We’d like it sooner rather than later."

The state’s Gaming Facility Location Board is expected to pick its choices for the three casino licenses by Dec. 1, just weeks after the election for county executive and legislature and Hempstead Town supervisor. Perhaps it’ll be less premature to discuss the future of the VLTs — and the Hub — then.

— Randi F. Marshall randi.marshall@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Moderation?

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Reference Point

Housing crunch continues decades later

"Young families are being forced to leave Long Island and older retired couples have to live in homes too big for them. Land and construction costs are so high that a large and important segment of the market — young families — can’t afford to buy the houses being built."

No, this isn’t from a 2025 editorial weighing in on the recent reporting by Newsday that it now takes a $242,000 salary to afford a single-family home on Long Island.

The statements appeared 50 years ago this week in a 1975 editorial titled "Is Long Island zoning out industry?" It argued that "excessive dedication" to the goal "of neighborhood preservation" on LI might be "the single most important cause" of some of the Island’s pressing economic and social problems. The "Let’s keep Long Island a good place to live" motto was preventing needed growth, the board said, a rallying cry much like today’s "Not In My Backyard" mantra.

The editorial chronicled what was happening in Brookhaven, where proposals for 23 two-family homes and a mobile home community were met with strong opposition amid the backdrop of "bleak" population and unemployment trends on LI that craved development like this.

Intervention by the courts is "probably inevitable," the board said, based on cases elsewhere that ruled discriminatory zoning could risk federal grant money towns needed, and warned that the courts were not the proper agency to plan land use.

Both county executives were worried about the trends and convened local business leaders to press for an industrial development agency to stimulate growth. The Suffolk Industrial Development Agency did end up getting off the ground a few years later in 1978.

"The zeal for neighborhood preservation menaces the area as a whole," the editorial board argued. "We hope Long Island’s preservationists will discover that in their zeal they’re strangling what they seek to save."

— Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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