When Foxwoods was founded in 1986 it was little more than a bingo parlor. Table games arrived in 1992, the same year Mohegan Sun was founded. Foxwoods was soon on a trajectory toward 4,700,000 square feet of entertainment and chance. Mohegan Sun, meantime, would come to boast one of the largest casinos in the country, more than 360,000 square feet.
Together, the two casinos enriched state coffers by more than $300 million in each of the last two years, and by more than $6 billion since they began operating, albeit witnessing a 4 percent downturn between 2011 and 2012.
The competition next door in New York, meantime, remained tepid: a Native American casino near Utica called Turning Stone began in 1993 and little else followed as a succession of upstate gambling initiatives crashed before beginning. Today there are six Native American gaming sites and nine racinos in New York, with Empire City in Yonkers a brief Interstate shot from Fairfield County.
And Connecticut”™s competition could get a lot hotter than during those long-ago, low-competition days of the Milford and Hartford jai-alai gaming sites, which closed in the 1990s.
It will be up to New York voters to decide the future of casino gambling in the state.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo did his part Tuesday to create gaming resorts in the Catskills and two other upstate regions when he signed the Upstate NY Gaming Economic Development Act. The comprehensive law, adopted by state legislators in June, would establish four destination gaming resorts to boost tourism and economic development in selected areas.
The gaming proposal must be approved by voters in a referendum on the November ballot.
The law authorizes gaming resorts to be built in the Hudson Valley”“ Catskills area, the Capital District-Saratoga area and the Central-Southern Tier. A special siting board appointed by the state Gaming Commission will set minimum capital expenditures required of competing developers and make its selections based on the impact the projects would have on business development and employment in regions and local communities.
The Catskills or another region could have two casinos if determined by the siting board.
Gaming resorts will not be allowed in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, New York City and Long Island.
If referendum voters reject the measure, the Gaming Commission can select one video lottery gaming facility development for each of the Capital District, Central-Southern Tier and Catskills regions and in Nassau County.
If the referendum passes, 10 percent of the state”™s tax revenues from the casinos will be split equally between the host municipality and the host county, while another 10 percent will go to other counties in the region of the destination resort.
The remaining 80 percent of state tax revenues will be used statewide for elementary and secondary education or property tax relief. The educational aid will be in addition to the state”™s existing allocations of aid to school districts.
Cuomo in a press release said the new law “will bring the state one step closer to establishing world-class destination gaming resorts that will attract tourists to upstate New York and support thousands of good paying jobs as well as new revenue for local businesses. For too many years, gaming revenue has left New York for our neighboring states.”
State Senator John Bonacic, the Middletown Republican who has championed the planned redevelopment of the former Concord Resort site in Sullivan County as a casino and race track resort, said legalizing gaming in New York “can create thousands of jobs and allow for billions of dollars in investment. Gaming can substantially improve the Catskills economy.”
