The former Concord Resort property in Sullivan County could be revived as a tourist destination after its selection by a state gaming board as the site of a Catskills casino to be developed by a nearby harness racetrack operator and the owner of New Roc City in New Rochelle.
Supporters of a resort casino in Sullivan County emerged as winners in the highly competitive and occasionally rancorous competition this year for the state”™s award of up to four casino gambling licenses in three upstate regions. Orange County supporters saw their bid for a casino dashed when the state Gaming Facility Location Board rejected all six applications from proposed developers there, citing concerns about “cannibalization” of existing gaming businesses in the New York City area and the risk that a casino in Orange County would pose to the success of a new competing casino in Sullivan or Ulster counties.
With those concerns, the five-member board chose only one casino proposal rather than the two allowed by state law for the Catskills and Hudson Valley region. The board also selected developers”™ proposals for casinos in the city of Schenectady in the Capital region and in Seneca County in the Finger Lakes region.
The board will recommend to the state Gaming Commission that it license Montreign Resort Casino on the nearly 1,700-acre site of the former Concord Resort Hotel in the town of Thompson. The chosen applicant, Montreign Operating Co. LLC, is a subsidiary of Empire Resorts Inc., which owns and operates the Monticello Casino and Raceway a few miles from the planned development.
Empire Resorts has partnered on the casino project with EPR Properties, a specialty real estate investment trust based in Kansas City, Mo. EPR is a former partner of Westchester County developer Louis Cappelli at New Roc City, the entertainment and retail complex in New Rochelle, and at City Center in White Plains. In a legal settlement in 2010, Cappelli transferred most of the acreage his company owned at the Concord Resort site to EPR after the partners”™ plans to redevelop the site were halted in the financial crisis in 2008.
EPR later teamed on the Catskills resort project with Empire Resorts, where Cappelli was a stockholder and former director.
Cappelli this year partnered with the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, which operates the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, in a losing proposal to develop Mohegan Sun at the Concord, a $550 million casino resort on property in the town of Thompson that adjoins the state”™s selected Montreign site.
Montreign”™s proposed 18-story, 80,000,-square-foot casino and 391-room hotel would be the centerpiece of a larger family destination resort, Adelaar, unveiled last March by EPR and Empire Resorts executives. Adelaar ”“ the Dutch word for eagle ”“ will include a nongaming, family-oriented Indoor Waterpark Lodge with 350 rooms and an 80,000-square-foot indoor water park; a 200,000-square-foot Entertainment Village with restaurants and specialty retail shops, and the Concord”™s redesigned Monster golf course.
Kevin Law, chairman of the Gaming Facility Location Board, said Empire Resorts proposed a total capital investment of $630 million. EPR and Empire Resorts in their application said their combined investment for the full Adelaar project will be approximately $1.1 billion. The partners said they invested $178 million in the project before the casino licensing legislation took effect this year.
Law said the Montreign casino is expected to generate $301 million in gross gaming revenue and $103 million in gaming tax revenue annually. Montreign expects to create 1,209 full-time and 96 part-time jobs.
The state board also recommended casino licenses for Rivers Casino & Resort at Mohawk Harbor, a $300 million development in downtown Schenectady proposed by Rush Street Gaming LLC in Chicago and The Galesi Group, a Schenectady developer already embarked on a $150 million mixed-use redevelopment at the 60-acre waterfront site of the proposed casino. The site was abandoned 45 years ago by one of the city”™s largest employers, the American Locomotive Co.
Competing with two other developers for a casino license in the eastern Southern Tier region, Lago Resort and Casino was chosen for a $425 million hotel and casino project in the town of Tyre.
David Brain, president and CEO of EPR Properties, in a press release called the board”™s Catskills selection “a critical step for EPR in realizing the larger vision of Adelaar, as the Montreign Resort Casino serves as the activating component to make this game-changing project come to life.”
Emanuel Pearlman, chairman of Empire Resorts, called the board”™s choice “an important next step as we finalize our plans to attract tourism to upstate New York and create thousands of good-paying jobs as well as new revenue for local businesses.”
At The Business Council of Westchester, executive vice president and COO John Ravitz in a statement called the board”™s decision not to approve a gaming license for Orange County “the right one for New York.” An Orange County casino “could have cannibalized an already successful business,” Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway, “that employs thousands of people and generates hundreds of millions of dollars for New York and would have jeopardized other potential casinos just north of Orange County,” he said.
As a former resident of the Sullivan County Catskills, I frankly can’t see gambling reviving the economic vitality of the region one bit. There might be some short-term gain in employment while they build these large entertainment centers, but even the most starry-eyed optimist wouldn’t predict even a modest success for this enterprise.
Rather than reviving the moribund tourist economy, the Catskills should have long ago tried to revive its other lost past: agriculture. If NY would subsidize organic farms with $630MM, NYC and regional cities would have meats and daily and produce (maybe even wine) that might rival places like Marin County in the Bay Area.
Rather than “discovering”, after a decade or so (just like with Monticello Raceway) that gambling is a tawdry and fickle enterprise, we might be developing the basis for a long-term enterprise that prides itself on quality and sustainability.