City agrees to Citi Field casino lease after legal challenge threatened proposal
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Metropolitan Park and the city agreed to a lease for the proposed $8 billion casino plan on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025. Rendering via Metropolitan Park
By Jacob Kaye
The city and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen signed a lease agreement on Monday that will allow Cohen and Hard Rock to build an $8 billion casino and entertainment complex on Citi Field’s parking lot should they be granted one of three downstate casino licenses the state is expected to hand out in the coming weeks.
The agreement, which was confirmed by both the city and the casino bidders, comes only a few days after a Manhattan judge ordered the city to halt negotiations over a lease with Cohen as a result of a lawsuit from the United States Tennis Association, which owns and operates the professional tennis complex across the street from the proposed casino project known as Metropolitan Park.
The USTA claimed in their lawsuit filed last week that through the new lease, the city was poised to violate a “superiority clause” in their lease with the tennis association, which grants the USTA first dibs on Citi Field’s parking lot during the U.S. Open and prevents the Mets – which lease out the publicly owned lot from the city – from holding any major events during the tournament.
The new agreement between the city and Metropolitan Park, which the USTA had no hand in negotiating, contains the superiority clause the tennis association sued over, according to both the city and Metropolitan Park.
Neither the city nor Metropolitan Park provided the Eagle with a copy of the agreement but both claim that it falls in line with the court order from Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Nancy Bannon. No formal ruling had been issued on the state of the lawsuit by press time.
Brendan McIntyre, a spokesperson for the USTA, told the Eagle on Monday that the new agreement meets the demands of the tennis association.
“We are thankful that the court honored our request and that the City has complied by adding the required language to its lease with Queens Future, which now acknowledges protections during the three weeks of the US Open,” McIntyre said. “We look forward to welcoming the casino as our newest neighbor in Flushing Meadow Corona Park.”
The agreement was also celebrated by Metropolitan Park
“We have successfully signed our pre-development agreement with the city,” Karl Rickett, a spokesperson for Metropolitan Park, said in a statement. “This moves forward Metropolitan Park as a comprehensive transformation of the area that embraces the existing sports attractions to create a world-class sports and entertainment destination in the heart of Queens. This is a positive step forward for the local community and fans.”
Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for the mayor, said that the agreement “complies with a recent court order and reflects the U.S. Tennis Association’s rights.”
“We look forward to the advancement of a world-class casino that would create thousands of union-paying jobs, billions of dollars in economic impact, and improvements to local communities,” Garcia said.
For now, the agreement appears to put to rest the lawsuit that threatened to torpedo Metropolitan Park’s potential for winning one of the three downstate casino licenses to be handed out by the state’s Gaming Commission by the end of the year.
Steve Cohen and his plan to build an $8 billion casino and entertainment complex on Citi Field’s parking lot appeared to be saved on Monday when the Mets owner and the city signed a new lease for the land. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
Though Metropolitan Park was not named as a defendant in the suit, the USTA claimed that the city had failed to enforce the superiority clause in its lease during negotiations over the new agreement with the casino bidders. Bannon granted a temporary restraining order to the USTA, barring the city from negotiating a lease with Metropolitan Park that didn’t include the superiority clause.
In their lawsuit, the USTA, which has leased parts of Flushing Meadows Corona Park from the city for over four decades, said the “city never consulted the [USTA] while negotiating its lease agreement with Queens Future and has refused to acknowledge it must include the superiority clause in its agreements with Queens Future.”
“For more than a year and on repeated occasions, the [USTA] has cautioned the city that any agreement it reaches with Queens Future for the proposed development of Metropolitan Park must respect and comply with the [USTA’s] longstanding lease rights,” the lawsuit continued. “The city has ignored that cautionary reminder.”
According to the lawsuit, the USTA had asked the city a number of times over the past five months to share a copy of the draft agreement with them so that they could see if the superiority clause was included, but the city has “refused.”
“The threat of serious damage to the US Open and the [USTA] is now both real and potentially disastrous, caused by the city’s non-compliance with core lease provisions upon which the US Open’s success depends,” the suit reads.
The suit couldn’t have come at a less opportune time for Metropolitan Park, which is in competition with only two other bidders – Resorts World New York City in South Queens and Bally’s in the Bronx, just over the Whitestone Bridge – for one of the three casino licenses.
In their application to the Gaming Commission, Metropolitan Park said that they had expected to sign the lease by Monday, a timeline the lawsuit appeared to threaten. The parties were not scheduled to appear back in court until Dec. 12.
Members of the Gaming Facility Location Board made site visits to all three casino hopefuls on Monday to understand the physical location of the proposals.
The board is expected to make a decision on the licenses by Dec. 1.
