Three upstate casinos get NY licenses

Joseph Spector Albany Bureau Chief | Wires

ALBANY — Let the games begin.

Three upstate casinos received their licenses Monday from the state Gaming Commission.

The casinos will be in Schenectady; Thompson, Sullivan County; and Tyre, Seneca County. They expect to be operating within the next two years; the Finger Lakes casino, called Lago, is facing lawsuits from opponents.

“On behalf of my family, everyone at Wilmorite and our Lago Resort & Casino partners, employees and supporters, I want to thank the New York state Gaming Commission for the trust they have shown in us,” Thomas Wilmot, the owner of Lago Casino & Resort in Tyre, said in a statement. “This is a huge day, and not just for those of us connected to Lago but also for the people of Tyre, Seneca County and the entire Finger Lakes region.”

The Catskills have been clamoring for a casino for decades as a way to turn around the once-booming tourist destination. Empire Resorts, the owner of the Sullivan County casino called Montreign, is pledging to build a $1.3 billion destination resort.

With the casino license, “we can expeditiously move forward and construct a resort destination that is more than just a casino; rather, it is a part of a $1.3 billion fully master-planned, sustainable, integrated gaming and destination resort,” the company’s chairman, Emanuel Pearlman, said in a statement.

The unanimous votes by the commission came a year after the state Gaming Facility Location board selected the three projects from 16 developers who were looking to build up to four casinos outside the New York City area.

The Gaming Commission, which was limited in its ability to reject the licenses, has been reviewing projects and planned to have the review complete by year’s end.

The Facility Location Board approved a fourth casino license in October for Tioga Downs in the Southern Tier, but that review by the full commission is not complete and wasn’t voted on Monday.

Each of the three casinos will need to pay $50 million to the state for the license. They can either pay it soon and get the license, or wait until March 1, when they would each have 30 days to pay up.

The state Legislature in 2013 approved up to four casinos to be built in upstate New York, and voters in 2013 agreed to a change in the state Constitution to allow for seven privately owned casinos in New York. The three remaining licenses won’t be awarded until at least seven years from now.

The location board last year rejected six casino proposals from Orange County, even though they would have been the most lucrative ones, saying that upstate should get the casinos, not areas close to New York City.

The board picked the Montreign casino in the struggling Catskills, and the developers are building the resort at the former Concord Hotel. The Schenectady casino will be in the downtown area, while the Tyre casino would be just off the state Thruway at Exit 41 on the northern tip of the Finger Lakes.

The new casinos will add to New York’s already robust gambling portfolio in a nearly saturated Northeast gambling market. New York has nine racetracks with video-lottery terminals and the largest lottery in the nation, as well as five Native American casinos across upstate.

But the new casino developers have been bullish on their prospects, saying their casinos will draw in new customers and create jobs. Rivers Casino in Schenectady said it plans to start construction because it now has the license secured.

“We look forward to beginning construction as anticipated, to bringing jobs to the Capital Region and to making Rivers Casino and Resort a successful economic engine for the state of New York,” Greg Carlin, the CEO of Rush Street Gaming, which is building the Schenectady casino.

The Lago casino has been opposed by area gaming facilities and some local residents.

The Oneida Indian Nation vowed Monday to sue to block Lago.

The Oneida Nation, which owns the Turning Stone Casino & Resort in central New York, said the state Gaming Commission’s decision was “a predictable outcome of a process that was predetermined to reach this result.”

Officials at Finger Lakes Gaming & Racetrack in Farmington, Ontario County, which is just 30 miles west of the Tyre site, have also complained long and hard about the increased competition posed by Lago. On Friday, it asked the state to allow it to cut back its horse racing schedule as a savings measure.

For its part, Lago has said it has followed the letter of the law and recently resumed construction on the $425 million casino. Wilmot has been trying to land a casino in New York and elsewhere for decades; he once sought a casino in downtown Rochester, but that proposal faltered.

Wilmot, a Rochester-area mall magnate, called the Finger Lakes casino a “game changer for the region.”

“We will create 1,800 jobs over the next year plus as we build Lago and then we will create 1,800 permanent jobs once Lago opens its doors, good jobs for people who desperately need them. We will bring new tourists to the Finger Lakes region to help wineries, breweries, farms and other local businesses grow,” he continued.

JSPECTOR@Gannett.com

Joseph Spector is chief of the Gannett Albany Bureau.