Steve Cohen likes to boast that he’ll spend whatever it takes to win.
He did it over three decades building his $27.2 billion investment business, buying the New York Mets for $2.4 billion in 2020 and then assembling a team to win the World Series at such incredible cost—his $353 million payroll is the highest in MLB history—that rival owners dubbed a penalty teams must pay when their payroll exceeds a certain level the “Cohen tax.” (The Cohen Mets haven’t won a World Series yet.)
Now, he’s at it again in an effort to win one of the most lucrative prizes in gambling: one of three licenses to build a casino in New York City, an opportunity that’s drawn some of the biggest names in real estate and gaming.
At least half of the proposals are targeting Manhattan, where a casino would probably be the most lucrative—including for the state, which gets a sizable cut of any revenue. Caesars Entertainment Inc. wants to place slots, poker and roulette tables in the building that’s home to The Lion King in Times Square. Saks Fifth Avenue is eyeing a boutique casino atop its flagship store, while Stefan Soloviev has pitched a gaming complex near the United Nations.
Cohen is proposing a casino next to the Mets’ Citi Field in Queens on what’s currently a vast parking lot and park.
It’s an expensive competition, with the state charging $500 million for each license and requiring a minimum $500 million investment. Collectively, bidders are spending a fortune on pitches for casinos from midtown Manhattan to Nassau County on Long Island. But Cohen is outspending all the new entrants into New York’s casino market. The hedge fund titan, worth $13.1 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has hired eight firms, employing nearly two dozen lobbyists to woo elected officials across city and state government as well as the local community.
Becoming a casino mogul would represent a remarkable third act for the native of Great Neck, Long Island, who became one of the most successful hedge fund managers in history before becoming embroiled in an insider trading scandal.
His firm, SAC Capital, pleaded guilty almost a decade ago to securities fraud and paid a record $1.8 billion, though he personally wasn’t charged. In the intervening years, he’s made a comeback managing money and remaking his image, building goodwill with his expensive revival of the Mets, and cementing his image as “Uncle Steve,” an avuncular and wealthy civic booster.
Cohen’s past could pose an obstacle to his ambition.
All potential casino applicants and any people involved with the bid are required to complete a 66-page background disclosure form and demonstrate their “integrity, honesty, good character and reputation.” Any applicants who have “committed prior acts which have not been prosecuted or in which the Applicant … was not convicted but form a pattern of misconduct” may have their applications denied, according to the state Gaming Commission.
“Over the years, Steve has gone through similar processes,” said Karl Rickett, a Cohen spokesperson. “When buying the Mets, he was approved by MLB.”
Make no mistake, securing a casino license in New York could be the closest thing to printing money since Cohen was reading the tape in his early investing days. By 2025, a Queens casino could be generating $1.9 billion in revenue annually, according to an analysis from Spectrum Gaming.
And that’s why he isn’t leaving anything to chance.
“He has hired the best team that money can buy,” said Warren Schreiber, president of the Queens Civic Congress, an umbrella organization of borough community groups opposed to the casino because it would require a 65-acre chunk of Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
Cohen and his team have been getting more involved in local politics for years. The billionaire was the largest single donor to Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 election campaign, pumping $2 million into outside PACs to support Adams in the Democratic primary.
Michael Sullivan, the chief of staff at Cohen’s Point72 hedge fund who Cohen describes as his right-hand man on the casino project, lives in Connecticut and has no history of political donations in New York prior to 2022. But he’s recently contributed to the political campaigns of some members of the six-person group of local politicians whose approval is necessary for a casino license. In 2022, Sullivan gave more than $15,000 to state lawmakers from Queens, and donated $35,000 to Governor Kathy Hochul’s election campaign.
Cohen has spent over $1 million in the last 15 months on a multimedia lobbying campaign, holding about 14 “visioning” sessions to win over Queens residents, serving hundreds of hot dogs, launching social media campaigns and a website called “Queens Future” where the possibility of converting the parking lot next to Citi Field into a Vegas-style casino is barely mentioned but is cast as an “opportunity” to “re-imagine this space and transform our future.”
He is likely partnering with Seminole Hard Rock on the bid application, but details of what he hopes to build and how many jobs it would create won’t be publicly available until the state issues a final deadline for bidders to submit their offers.
“When I do something, I don’t do it halfway, I’m all in,” Cohen said in a February interview on ESPN. He was talking about the Mets, but he may as well have been talking about his casino plan.
If successful, Cohen will have pulled off an astonishingly rare feat in New York, winning support from local elected officials whose approval is necessary to win the license, amid a political environment in which politicians are loath to approve new development of any kind, especially to suit the whims of billionaires.
Money alone is no guarantee of success in New York, where the elaborate political infrastructure and kaleidoscopic variety of interest groups and constituencies that need placating have often proved too difficult for even the formidably well-funded to navigate.
In 2010, Walmart tried to build a store in New York City and failed, running afoul of the retail workers’ union. In 2014, Airbnb failed to shore up political support when it entered New York and quickly found itself legislated almost out of existence by politicians who had the backing of the mighty hotel workers’ union. And when Amazon in 2018 tried to place a new headquarters in Long Island City, in Queens, its failure to shore up backing from key politicians and interest groups ground the negotiations to a halt.
“Almost anybody could have done a better job as far as community outreach than Jeff Bezos did,” Schreiber said. “Maybe Steve Cohen has learned from that.”
Though Schreiber and his organization oppose Cohen’s casino idea, even he reluctantly conceded that he’s run a textbook charm offensive so far.
New York state Assembly Member Jeff Aubry, who represents the district that encompasses Citi Field and Cohen’s site, said he doesn’t typically hang out with billionaires, but that Cohen has done the right things in connecting with the community.
“As far as I can see, he goes after it the same way he goes after trying to make the Mets a winner, full force,” Aubry said. “He’s obviously in a place financially where he can do that.”
In early April, Aubry introduced a bill to annex the parking lot next to Citi Field, which is part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park, specifically to allow for the development of a casino by New Green Willets, the limited liability corporation Cohen set up to lobby for his proposal.
Outer Boroughs
Any potential casino must first be approved by a majority of members of a special-purpose “siting board” made up of the elected officials who represent the district where the facility would be located.
The provision was the brainchild of Senate Finance Committee Chair Liz Krueger, who represents parts of Midtown and the Upper East Side in Manhattan, and is ideologically opposed to casinos.
Krueger, a Democrat, says casinos prey on the poor and generate less revenue than is often touted. And the provision effectively gives Krueger and other Manhattan elected officials, most of whom are either outright opposed to or lukewarm about the idea of casinos in their districts, veto power over the proposals.
Multiple Manhattan lawmakers interviewed said their constituents were opposed to the idea of a casino in their neighborhood, wary of increased noise, crime and traffic—and the dangers of gambling addiction.
“I can’t find real people who seem to be in favor of it,” said Krueger, who has three potential bids for casinos in her district.
One of those bidders is Caesars’ Entertainment, which is working with real estate firm SL Green on pitch for a casino in Times Square. The hotel and gaming facility would rise above 1515 Broadway, which houses the Broadway musical The Lion King in its ground floor theater. Krueger said potential bidders have gone all out trying to win her support, even offering her a meeting with rapper and mogul Jay-Z, whose RocNation has signed on as an entertainment partner for the proposal.
“I remember one of the companies excitedly told me about Jay-Z,” she recalled. “‘He’s coming on board. Maybe you want to meet him?’” Krueger recalled. “I go, ‘No, not particularly.’”
The Times Square casino is just one of at least six known potential bids in Manhattan, all of which face likely challenges.
“Who among us wants to be the elected official who brings a casino to Manhattan?” said state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat whose district covers a large swath of western Manhattan. “I don’t know if any of us want that on our political epitaph: ‘He fought to bring in casino gambling to the West Side.’”
That’s not deterring developers. Vornado Realty Trust is eyeing a potential casino at Herald Square, near 34th Street and Broadway. Silverstein Properties is considering proposing a casino at the site of its West Side Mercedes Benz property. Further south, Related Cos. and Wynn Resorts Ltd. are working on a pitch for Hudson Yards South, the former train yard. And on the East Side is luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue and its proposal for an upscale boutique casino on Fifth Avenue near Rockefeller Center.
“If I were a betting man, I don’t think I would bet on it ending up here,” said Assembly Member Alex Bores, whose Upper East Side district encompasses the Saks Fifth Avenue site.
A few long blocks away, real estate developer Stefan Soloviev is partnering with Mohegan Sun on a pitch for a casino/hotel complex at a massive, forlorn-looking empty lot at 41st Street and First Avenue, near the United Nations. Soloviev Group Chief Executive Officer Michael Hershman touted the plan, which also would include a Democracy Museum, to “fight back against the growth of authoritarianism both in our country and abroad.”
Best of the Rest
While as many as three licenses are technically available for downstate New York, potential bidders are assuming there’s really just one license up for grabs to new entrants to the New York City area. That’s because most lobbyists believe two of the licenses will go to the existing downstate “racinos”—Resorts World in Queens, run by the Malaysian gambling company Genting, and the Yonkers Raceway, operated by MGM.
Other outer-borough casinos are being pitched, and face varying degrees of resistance from local lawmakers and community residents. Bally’s recently announced its plans for a casino at Ferry Point in the Bronx, a proposal that would require taking over land that was part of Donald Trump’s golf course, and which has already garnered some support from local elected officials.
Another bid, pitched by the Chickasaw Nation and Thor Equities Group, would be located at Coney Island, with the picturesque boardwalk and Wonder Wheel forming a backdrop. And Las Vegas Sands is proposing a casino in Nassau County on Long Island, near the Hempstead Turnpike, a plan that county officials are publicly supporting, but which has already sparked a lawsuit from nearby Hofstra University.
Any decisions are still a long time away, because the state hasn’t set firm deadlines for when the bids are due. The lengthy process and the high costs of entry are worth it for possible casino operators, however, because of the potential upside, multiple lobbyists said.
In 2021, Resorts World, the racino in southeastern Queens, took in more than $850 million in revenue, the most of any casino outside of Las Vegas, according to a report from the American Gaming Association.
“The three licenses in and around New York City are such a uniquely valuable casino development opportunity,” said James Kilsby, chief analyst with Vixio, a gambling consulting firm. “There’s nowhere in the United States that would match the appeal of New York City from a casino developing perspective,” Kilsby said.
All of which is why Cohen has taken every measure possible to increase his odds of success in the casino bidding war. “He’s left no stone unturned at this point,” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said. “He never wants to take a loss. He’s gonna spend what it takes to win.”
—With assistance from Natalie Wong.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
