THE BACK PAGE: A New York state of mind
by Charles Anderer
February 11, 2013
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State speech last month brought a measure
of disappointment and confusion to many who thought they had seen the future of
gaming in the Empire State, one that included
table games in New York City and the surrounding suburbs, if not a
full-blown destination resort somewhere within the confines of its five
boroughs.
But the plan now is
to limit full-scale casino gaming to up to three new casinos in upstate New
York. Table games are currently limited to the state’s five tribal gaming facilities, which means there isn’t a live table game east of Turning Stone in west –central
Verona or south of Akwesasne Mohawk
Casino on the Canadian border in the northern-most part of the state. Given
that the racetrack gaming facilities in Aqueduct and Yonkers also lack hotel
rooms, true destination resort gaming is still an out-of-state experience for
New York City-area residents.
Gov. Cuomo has not specified
where the new facilities might be, though one would have to think the Catskills
are at the top of the list, as the region best accommodates the Governor’s stated goal of driving traffic from
the city north. Any legalization of table games
still has to run through the constitutional amendment process, which would
include a statewide referendum on a constitutional amendment that has already
been passed by the last session of the Legislature.
State law mandates that amendments have to be approved by successive sessions
of the Legislature before being voted on by the public, which means the law could change after this
November’s election if all goes according to plan and the amendment is
re-approved in the current session.
The Governor’s stated
aim is to get large national casino operators to bid for gaming rights, the
winners being selected by a gaming commission that he will form. This would
appear to leave the state’s existing gaming operations out in the cold, which
is a tough blow for the companies that have built businesses on a very strict
regime of high taxes and tight product restrictions. But such is life in the gaming industry,
which rarely evolves in classic commercial playbook fashion.
I can imagine the
states of New Jersey and Connecticut thought they caught a break when they
heard the Governor’s new plan. Foxwoods, Mohegan Sun and Atlantic City will
still have a shot at the New York City market, even if something compelling
gets built in the Catskills. Having lived in this area most of my life, I’m
pretty sure that anything beyond the Catskills will be a reach for people in
and around the City, which basically takes the better part of an hour to exit
on a typical getaway day.
The whole notion of “upstate” is unusually complicated
for the City. You can still hear press accounts from city media that refer to
Yonkers, yes, Yonkers, as “upstate,” and that’s a town that borders the Bronx.
Another 370 miles north and you hit Canada. The state is huge and, biased
though I may be, unbelievably gorgeous through and through (the Watkins Glen
Canyon…don’t miss it; I almost did and I’ve been here over 50 years). The
problem with getting people out of the City is there’s just so much to do
there, and all but the most devoted gamblers will take some serious selling to
make the trek upstate. Which is why many
found the logic of a New York City gaming resort so strong, including the
Governor, apparently, at one point, when he was contemplating a massive
convention center at Aqueduct.
A JOB INCREDIBLY WELL DONE
About two months after I started covering this industry in 1995, Frank
Fahrenkopf, whose pending retirement was announced last month, became the
founding chief executive of the American Gaming Association. At the time, the
National Gambling Impact Study Commission was on the radar and the American
gaming industry was in dire need of a central organization that could assemble
and communicate the case for legal, regulated gambling in the U.S. With his
Nevada roots and background in gaming law and politics at the national level,
Fahrenkopf had the resume, but he also had something else that truly elevated
this industry: a genuine eye for, and interest in, credible information and how
it could both demystify gaming and reassure those who had an open mind to it.
For an industry that was only then emerging as a national presence, future
growth depended heavily, then as now, on a deeper understanding of problem
gambling and the full range of economic and social impacts of gaming. No one did
more to build the case with integrity and skill than Frank Fahrenkopf, who will
leave the AGA in June as a globally important and indispensible resource for
this industry.
Charles Anderer
is executive editor of BNP Media Gaming Group and also oversees content development, sales and marketing for the company’s trade shows and conferences, which include Bingo World, Southern Gaming Summit, Gaming Technology Summit, New York Gaming Summit and Casino Marketing. He can be contacted at andererc@bnpmedia.com.
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