One Bite at the Apple

“Jay-Z is pushing to get it. Nas wants a piece. The owner of the Mets is spending a fortune to win. A subsidiary of the Yankees is trying, too. Manhattan’s biggest commercial landlord is all-in. The Hudson Yards crew wants it, and so does the man behind Coney Island. A former police commissioner is wrapped up in this. And a former governor. And Eric Adams’s closest confidant. And the guy who owns Donald Trump’s old golf course. And the head of a private intelligence firm.” What’s the big prize everyone seems to want a piece of? A casino in NYC, or what one insider describes as “a license to print money, literally.” It’s the city that never sleeps which provides 24 hours a day for customers to drop their money into slot machines. Yes, terrestrial casinos are still a goldmine even though we’re all carrying casinos around in our pockets. Noah Shachtman in NYMag: New Jackpot City. Eleven rivals. Countless billions. One prize: the right to build a casino in the heart of New York. How big is the opportunity? Consider what the bidders are offering in return for the license. “New Yorkers may be used to grandiosity, to shrugging at a new skyscraper like it’s another foothill in a mountain chain. The casino deal is different. The opportunity is so gargantuan that the bidders are promising, almost as add-ons, to spend billions to solve some of the city’s most challenging engineering feats and to build concert halls, apartment towers, science centers, public schools, parks, even a museum of democracy. These are projects that would ordinarily merit headlines all on their own. In this contest, they’re mere loss leaders.” The only thing bigger than the Big Apple is three cherries in a row on a slot machine.