Come talk to the employees of Nassau OTB about Teamsters Local 707 which is in danger of going bust and having its pension plan taken over by the PBGC.
NY needs competent crooks with character!
Referendum on Casinos Stirs Hopes in Tiny Town
By JESSE McKINLEY
NICHOLS, N.Y. — Sitting on a temperamental bend of the Susquehanna
River, this upstate New York town is not exactly Las Vegas, with little
to offer visitors other than some baseball diamonds, a couple of bars
and a Main Street that dead-ends at an excavation company.
But out on River Road is a site on which many in this town pin their hopes for economic salvation: Tioga Downs,
a refurbished harness racing track and slot machine parlor that many
locals see as a lifeline and a potential key to the future.
“There’s no big businesses that are coming to the Southern Tier, you
know what I mean?” said Truman Kittle, 63, a truck driver, former
volunteer fire chief and lifelong Nichols resident. “But Tioga could be
that.”
Indeed, in towns across the stagnant Southern Tier and elsewhere, people like Mr. Kittle are betting on the success of Proposal 1,
a statewide referendum to be decided on Tuesday that would authorize up
to seven full-scale casinos around the state. Supporters, including
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, have been selling it as an economic development
measure, describing the potential for “Las Vegas style” resorts with
investments in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the potential
for 10,000 new jobs.
But the reality may be far more restrained. Some of the possible
locations for the new gambling operations are distant from major
population centers, and the experience of some remote American Indian
casinos suggests that luring customers from big cities could be a
challenge.
One of those potential sites is Tioga Downs, a county-fair-themed
operation that sometimes holds promotions like ostrich and camel races
to draw people to the grandstand. There is no guarantee that Tioga Downs
would be chosen should the referendum pass, but if it were, the owner,
Jeffrey M. Gural, said he would spend about $90 million over two years
to expand its gambling operations from a video slot machine parlor to a
full casino.
Even so, the immediate economic gain would be modest: some 200 permanent
positions, according to Mr. Gural, and 300 jobs related to the
construction. And of the $90 million budgeted, about a quarter would go
to buy furniture, equipment and, of course, new table games and slot
machines.
Experts say that while casinos in far-flung locations — Nichols is three
and a half hours northwest of Manhattan and about an hour and 40
minutes south of Syracuse — certainly create some jobs, their long-term
economic impact is less clear.
Alan R. Woinski, the president of Gaming USA Corporation,
which publishes industry newsletters, said the proliferation of casinos
in neighboring states, including Pennsylvania, would be a challenge for
any Southern Tier casino. “It’s not like the old days, where you opened
up a casino and the whole area around it soon got built up,” said Mr.
Woinski, who is based in New Jersey, another casino state. “A lot of
times, casinos get put in there, and yes, you increase jobs, but the
reality is that it’s not that big of a deal.”
Those arguments have been echoed by opponents of Proposal 1, including
David Blankenhorn, the founder of the Institute for American Values, who
said casinos do not contribute to economic growth over time, because
they “produce nothing of value.”
“They are simply rosy assertions made by people who want more casinos,” Mr. Blankenhorn said.
But just the potential for hundreds of new jobs is enticing in a region
that has fewer and fewer big, steady employers, like Lockheed Martin in
Owego, about 10 miles upriver. The plant, which dates to the 1950s and
once employed some 4,000 people, has scaled back over the years, and may
shrink again this week when staffing changes are announced by the
company.
“We had a lot of good things going for us here,” said James Branston,
68, who has served as the town supervisor in Nichols for a
quarter-century.
Concern about the Southern Tier’s future has been heightened by the
proximity of another seemingly potent economic force: hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking, the controversial mining method that is legal
just across the border in Pennsylvania but has been put off in New York for five years and counting.
“There are so, so many people so angry down here that we don’t have the
gas drilling here,” Mr. Branston said. “We sit two miles from the state
line and see the things that they got. Business is booming down there.”
The promise of new tax dollars from a bigger Tioga Downs is also
enticing; about half of the roads in Nichols are still dirt, for
example, and more revenue could mean “every road in this town ends up in
blacktop,” Mr. Branston said. Still, the Rev. Richard McGowan,
an associate professor at the Carroll School of Management at Boston
College who writes about the gambling industry, said that competition
from an increasing proliferation of casinos nationwide would most likely
soften any new casino’s economic effects. “The only time you revitalize
the area, quite honestly, is when you get a monopoly,” he said.
Under the proposal, the first four casinos will be placed in three
regions — the Southern Tier, the Hudson Valley/Catskills, and in or near
Albany — with bidding expected to be most intense in the Catskills.
Backers of Proposal 1 have poured millions into getting the measure
passed, with racetrack-casino (or “racino”) owners like Mr. Gural
helping to lead the charge.
Since September, Mr. Gural has spent more than $400,000 on Proposal 1,
including $375,000 in donations to New York Jobs Now, a coalition of
business, labor and political leaders who have been pushing for the
proposal across the state. Signs supporting the referendum line the road
to Tioga Downs, with posters and buttons all over the casino.
In fact, Mr. Gural has already drafted plans for what he would do, a
vision for an expanded gambling operation that includes a new 143-room
hotel, an upscale spa, and a wedding and convention center. There would
be outdoor dining during the summers, and guests would be sheltered from
harsh Tioga County winters by an indoor garage (a trackside lot outside
is gravel). First-class acts would replace the current lineup of Neil
Diamond tribute bands and duck-call competitions.
And, of course, there would be craps, roulette and poker, adding to the
clatter of video lottery machines that currently fill Tioga Downs, a
blocky, bland structure with a sports bar, a gift shop peddling $25
“luxury” handbags and a variety of complimentary wheelchairs.
“I need to get the young people and the more affluent people to come to the place,” said Mr. Gural, who is the chairman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank,
a Manhattan real estate firm, and bought the track with a partner in
2005. “Because they go right now either to Mohegan Sun in Pennsylvania
or Turning Stone,” an Oneida Indian casino in central New York, both of
which have table games.
Sure enough, on a recent Saturday night, the scene at Tioga Downs was a
little creaky, although festive. On a small stage near a Subway
restaurant, an Oktoberfest band played oompah and polka songs, while a
few older couples danced under white neon lights. Near the door, about a
dozen wheelchairs were folded, awaiting infirm customers.
One person there that night was Marcy Licari, a former teacher from New
York City, who had moved to Binghamton after retirement. She said she
had respect for Mr. Gural, who had helped out the community during
floods here in 2011, and would vote “Yes” on Proposal 1 because “any job
would be beneficial for the economy.”
“It’s the only game in town,” she said. “It would be ridiculous to deny people.”
HI-
Thanks for the help. The item’s
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address.
Claude
Solnik
(631)
913-4244
Long Island Business
News
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LI Confidential
> Stop scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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