Cohen’s casino plan wins over community boards
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Community boards throughout Queens recently voted on Mets owner Steve Cohen’s plan to build Metropolitan Park, a casino and entertainment complex slated for Citi Field’s parking lot. All five of the boards that voted on the project, gave it their approval. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Jacob Kaye
Mets owner Steve Cohen’s plan to bring a casino to Western Queens was overwhelmingly approved by all five community boards charged with reviewing the proposal under the city’s land use review process.
It was a minor but telling step for the controversial $8 billion proposal, which would bring a casino and entertainment complex dubbed Metropolitan Park to Citi Field’s parking lot, a 50-acre plot of land owned by the city and technically designated as parkland.
In addition to the Queens community boards, which served as the first stop for Metropolitan Park’s journey through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, Cohen will need a host of other approvals in order to bring a casino to the corner of Queens already slated for a major redevelopment over the next decade. Next year, the Mets owner will need a local community advisory committee to give the project the thumbs up. He also still needs the state legislature to pass a “parkland alienation” bill giving him express permission to build on the area that’s technically part of nearby Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Earlier this year, State Senator Jessica Ramos, whose district includes Citi Field, decided against introducing such a bill, at least temporarily putting the entire project in jeopardy.
But none of Cohen’s needed approvals will be more important than that of the state’s Gaming Commission, which will hand out three casino licenses to downstate New York bidders by the end of 2025.
Without a license, Cohen and his partner, Hard Rock, won’t be able to build a casino, nor will they be able to build the open space, food hall, live music venue, community facility, hotels and infrastructure improvements promised alongside the project, they say.
And though Metropolitan Park’s pitch to the community boards technically revolved around two relatively simple zoning changes that would allow them to compete for one of the three licenses, it was the casino, the entertainment complex and the promise of $1 billion in community benefits and jobs that dominated the debate among Queens’ community boards and the hundreds of Queens residents who came before them to testify.
A community board flush
Because the land Cohen is eyeing for the casino is part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, every community board in Queens that has a piece of the park included in its boundaries was required to vote on the proposal.
Over the past several weeks, Queens community boards 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9 issued recommendations on Metropolitan Park after hearing at least one presentation from Cohen’s chief of staff, Michael Sullivan, and holding public hearings on the project.
While board members were understandably more interested in discussing the design elements of Metropolitan Park, they were technically tasked with voting on two zoning changes the developers need approved in order to take their proposal to the next step. Cohen needs city approval to upzone the parking lot to a new zoning designation created this year by the city specifically for casinos, and he also needs the city to allow him to de-map a number of streets in the area he wants to build.
Community Board 7, which covers Flushing, Whitestone, College Point, Willets Point and Malba, voted 36 to 4 to approve Metropolitan Park. Community Board 6, which covers Forest Hills and Rego Park, voted 32 to 6 in favor of the project. Community Board 8, which includes Briarwood, Fresh Meadows, Hillcrest, Holliswood, Jamaica Estates, Kew Gardens Hills, Utopia and parts of Flushing, voted in favor of Metropolitan Park 31 to 4. Community Board 9, which covers Woodhaven, Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, voted 27 to 3 in favor of the casino plan. Community Board 3, which covers East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona, voted to approve the project 26 to 8.
Community Board 4, which covers parts of Corona and Elmhurst, was also supposed to vote on the project but postponed their meeting on Metropolitan Park without an explanation. The board’s vote on the plan, which was rescheduled for mid-December, will fall out of the window the boards had to issue a recommendation on the proposal.
A rendering of Metropolitan Park. Rendering via Metropolitan Park
Though the plan was presented to boards in contrasting neighborhoods, the presentations, questions from board members and feedback from the public looked relatively similar from stop to stop.
Prominent Queens residents, like former Councilmembers Costa Constantinides and Danny Dromm, traveled from board to board extolling the project’s benefits. Members of Guardians of the Flushing Bay, a local environmental nonprofit, also protested the proposal at multiple board meetings, sometimes serving as the sole dissenters in the room.
Board members in both Elmhurst and Kew Gardens Hills wanted to know how parking fits into the grand plan – Cohen plans to build several parking garages and two levels of parking underneath the entertainment complex and casino, Sullivan told them.
And at each of the board meetings, board members praised Cohen, Hard Rock and their staff for holding meetings on the proposal with Queens residents and groups for the better part of three years.
Also at each meeting were at least several board members whose only concern about the project revolved around its central component – the casino.
At least one board member at nearly every meeting asked if there was any way to remove the casino from the proposal, while still keeping the other elements of the plan.
Sullivan, who attended all but one of the votes, gave nearly the same answer every time.
“We need the gaming to draw people to the area year round,” Sullivan said at Community Board 8’s meeting.
“I just took you through a couple billion dollars of infrastructure that's required to build on this site,” he told Community Board 3. “We need a steady flow of people to come to the site year round.”
In some cases, the promise of the additional elements of Metropolitan Park were enough to win over board members bothered by the casino.
“I was a really hard no on this,” said Warren Schreiber, a member of Community Board 7 and the president of the Queens Civic Congress. “For me, I don't care about casinos.”
“[But] I listened to the chairs of some of the other community boards…and they told me how supportive their boards were and how supportive the people were who came out,” he added. “We should find a way to not compete with the park that Metropolitan Park wants to build, but to enhance it and we can do that.”
Others couldn’t get past it.
One member of Community Board 3 remarked that Sullivan’s presentation sounded “like paradise,” before adding that she couldn’t shake the feeling that the casino was forbidden fruit.
In the end, there was little doubt that support for Metropolitan Park, casino and all, was strong among the community boards. Around 85 percent of all board members who voted on the project, voted in its favor.
The night is young
As part of the city’s land use review process, Cohen’s proposal will now head to the Queens borough president’s desk, where it will likely get his approval. Borough President Donovan Richards has been vocal about his support of Metropolitan Park for the past several months.
“Queens is growing like never before, and we can't turn our back on unprecedented economic development opportunities for historically marginalized communities,” Richards said in a May tweet. “That’s why our families deserve the 25,000 good-paying union jobs, the $163 million community investment fund, a food hall for Queens-based vendors, critical support for [community-based organizations] and more through Metropolitan Park.”
Following Richards’ recommendation, the plan will be reviewed by the City Planning Commission and then the City Council, which will likely vote the way of the local member, Francisco Moya, who has also enthusiastically supported Metropolitan Park.
“It is a transformative plan that could significantly boost our community and the city's economy,” Moya told Community Board 7 ahead of their vote on the plan last week.
Mayor Eric Adams, who hasn’t publicly expressed support for any single casino proposal but who has generally been supportive of the idea of bringing at least one casino to the five boroughs, will be the last to sign off on the project as part of the city’s land use review process.
But while Metropolitan Park may see winning hands throughout the duration of the ULURP process, it could face worse odds elsewhere.
Cohen, like at least one other casino bidder, still needs the state legislature to pass a parkland alienation bill giving him permission to build a casino on parkland.
While a parkland alienation bill doesn’t have to be introduced by the lawmaker whose district includes the parkland in question, the state legislature respects the tradition of giving the local lawmaker dominion over their district.
Ramos, who spoke at Community Board 3’s meeting prior to their vote, said she hadn’t changed her position on the casino and wouldn’t be introducing parkland alienation legislation in the Senate’s upcoming session. She cited the three town halls she held, several polls and dozens of conversations she had with constituents about the casino over the past two years, estimating that around three quarters of those she polled or spoke with were opposed to the plan.
State Senator Jessica Ramos said at a Community Board 3 meeting that she remains opposed to Metropolitan Park, a plan to bring a casino and entertainment complex to Western Queens. Eagle File photo by Jacob Kaye
When asked by the Eagle how she squared the difference between the responses to Metropolitan Park she got from constituents and the reception it got at the community boards, Ramos said that she had “no doubt they have been lobbied heavily.”
Ramos, who has launched a bid to challenge Mayor Eric Adams for his seat in next year’s mayoral primary, said that her opposition to Metropolitan Park wasn’t necessarily exclusive – she’s generally opposed to any casino being built in the five boroughs.
“I think there are many other different ways that we could generate revenue that are wholesome and family oriented,” she said.
Even without Ramos, Cohen has friends in the legislature.
Though local Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, who introduced a parkland alienation bill in the Assembly last year, will officially retire at the end of the year, his replacement, Assemblymember-elect Larinda Hooks, is fully supportive of the proposal.
“We have to understand the only way out of crime and out of poverty is with economic development,” Hooks, a member of Community Board 3, told the board.
Should lawmakers not pass a bill, there’s also a chance Governor Kathy Hochul includes a general parkland alienation bill in her upcoming budget proposal. Though Hochul has dismissed the idea, it remains a pathway not only for Cohen, but the developers behind a proposal to bring a casino to Ferry Point Park in the Bronx.
Should Cohen get his parkland alienation bill, he’ll also need the approval of a local community advisory committee, which would be made up of mayoral representative, a gubernatorial representative, a City Council representative, the local assemblymember, the local state senator and the borough president. In order to get the council’s OK, Cohen would need two-thirds of the group to vote in support of Metropolitan Park.
The Gamming Commission will be the final piece of the puzzle for Cohen. The commission, which is around a year behind its original timeline for issuing the downstate casino licenses, is expected to dole out the three approvals in the final days of 2025.
