Suffolk OTB reconsiders Medford casino plan after failing to sell site to the catholic church for use as cemetery
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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.
The original Medford casino plan announced in 2014 had faced opposition from area civic leaders and Brookhaven Town officials.
Loretta Nastasi of Medford protests during an anti-casino rally in Medford on Sept. 26, 2015. Credit: Barry Sloan
Suffolk OTB is dusting off plans to build a video lottery casino or sports betting facility at the Medford site where a previous casino plan was scuttled two years ago, OTB president Phil Nolan said.
Plans for a second casino or sports betting would require state legislation. Nolan said those options are under consideration because OTB has struggled to sell the vacant, 32-acre site on the South Service Road of the Long Island Expressway.
Suffolk County Regional Off-Track Betting Corp. put the site up for sale in 2016 after striking a deal to open a 1,000-terminal video lottery parlor at Jake's 58 Hotel & Casino in Islandia. Several deals to sell the Medford site have fallen through, Nolan said.
“The only thing we can do with the property, other than to build on it, is to sell it to someone, and that opportunity has never come our way," Nolan said in a telephone interview Monday. "We discussed it and we decided to keep our eyes and ears open.”
State law restricts Suffolk to 1,000 VLT machines, all of which are at Jake's 58. Nolan said OTB would consider building a casino in Medford with up to 1,000 machines if the state allows Suffolk to expand to 2,000 terminals.
No bills for either VLT expansion or sports betting are pending in the State Legislature, Nolan said. A bill to legalize sports betting failed earlier this year.
Brookhaven Town officials had raised questions about zoning issues at the Medford site that remain unresolved and would have to be addressed before OTB could build there.
The original Medford casino plan announced in 2014 had faced opposition from Medford civic leaders and town officials.
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