New York — A state-appointed Community Advisory Committee voted to advance Steve Cohen’s $8 billion “Metropolitan Park” proposal for a casino and entertainment district on the parking lots surrounding the Mets’ ballpark in Queens. The 6–0 vote moves one of New York’s most closely watched development bids into the final round of the downstate casino competition, a high-stakes process that will award up to three licenses by year’s end. For a market-based snapshot of the morning’s proceedings, see a detailed market-side readout of the vote, which underscored how quickly the Queens bid has accumulated momentum once long-standing legal barriers began to fall.
The committee’s endorsement is more than a ceremonial nod. Under the rules established by the New York State Gaming Facility Location Board, each bid must show measurable local support before it can be weighed on financial strength, tax revenue, traffic and transit impacts, labor agreements, design, and public benefits. With the advisory hurdle cleared, the application now proceeds on a schedule set out by the siting board’s own timeline, which points to decisions in early December and formal licensure by the end of the month.
Queens’ vote arrives after a bruising year for Manhattan aspirants. Times Square drew entrenched opposition from theater owners; Hudson Yards faced unanimous resistance at its local community board; and a Coney Island consortium failed to convince its advisory panel that a casino belonged on the People’s Playground. For readers tracking the borough-by-borough saga, The Eastern Herald has chronicled the Midtown committees’ no votes and the death of every active bid within Manhattan’s borders. A week earlier, we detailed how Broadway interests helped sink a marquee partnership in the Theater District, noting the intensity of Broadway-aligned opposition in Times Square and the traffic-management concerns that came with it.
As those bids stumbled, two racinos—MGM’s Empire City in Yonkers and Genting’s Resorts World at Aqueduct—consolidated their advantage, arguing they could flip existing video-lottery operations into full casinos with minimal delay. That context sharpened interest in the asphalt seas beside the Mets’ stadium—derided for decades as dead space—where Cohen and Hard Rock have pitched an urban resort stitched into new parkland and public promenades. Local newscasts captured the unanimity of the panel: see local broadcast coverage of the unanimous tally confirming the 6–0 vote and the project’s 50-acre footprint.
Cohen’s team has worked to make the case unavoidable. The proposal would convert roughly 50 acres of blacktop into a Hard Rock–branded gaming floor, a hotel and live music venue, a food hall tapping Queens’ unmatched culinary diaspora, and a landscaped park network advertised at roughly two dozen acres. The developers’ pitch leans heavily on synergy: a year-round entertainment spine beside the baseball stadium, a planned MLS arena and housing district at Willets Point, and transit access via the 7 train and Long Island Rail Road. For a sense of the vision as proponents describe it, see the bid’s own vision materials, which emphasize open esplanades, event programming, and new public space.
Until recently, the project was hemmed in by law. The designated footprint sits on land classified as part of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Any private development there required Albany to “alienate” that parkland—formally discontinuing it for recreational use—while replacing it with new park investment of equal or greater value. The Legislature advanced that change this year; the operative text is found in the enabling statute on discontinuing park use, which authorizes the city to reprogram specific parcels in exchange for mandated improvements and replacement open space.
Tuesday’s vote is the culmination of a campaign that played out in both public meetings and back rooms. Queens Borough Hall saw packed hearings, with hospitality unions, construction trades, and small-business owners lining up alongside neighborhood advocates who fear addiction, congestion, and the social costs of 24/7 gaming. Supporters point to landscaped promenades and year-round jobs; opponents warn of late-night crowds and the cannibalization of local retail. The advisory committee’s charge was to weigh testimony and assess community benefit pledges. By sending Metropolitan Park forward unanimously, the panel affirmed that baseline social license—never uncontested—now exists.
The politics remain thorny. While Queens elected officials are not monolithic, the project has notched crucial allies at the borough and city levels. City Hall, for its part, has embraced the broader Willets Point redevelopment—anchored by affordable housing and a new soccer stadium—that is moving through land-use approvals and site work. For documentation of that adjacent buildout, note City Hall’s Phase-2 approvals next door, including housing and the stadium linkage to parking at the ballpark on event days.
Whether the casino’s additional density and program can be reconciled with the area’s transportation constraints is the next technical question. The 7 train, already strained on high-attendance days, and the Grand Central Parkway choke points will figure in the state’s scoring of traffic plans. So, too, will security measures, problem-gambling services, and integration with neighborhood sanitation and policing operations. New York regulators have published the evaluation rubric the board is using, which puts heavy weight on readiness, labor, public benefits, and mitigation of harms.
The economics of the bid are decisive. State officials are counting on large one-time license fees and recurring taxes; they have also signaled a preference for projects that can begin paying back quickly. That logic explains why the two racinos are seen as likely first picks: their gaming floors already exist, so conversion to full casinos could return revenue within months of licensure. For macro context on demand, consider how the broader US market posted a record digital-gambling revenue surge this spring, a trend that bolsters Albany’s confidence in near-term receipts. Closer to home, the siting board has reiterated its year-end milestones, detailed again in a formal timeline update that explains how supplemental filings and proposed tax rates will be handled.
There is also an urban design argument. The parking lots around the stadium have been a civic embarrassment since long before the Iron Triangle began its own transformation. Advocates speak of a once-in-a-generation chance to stitch together parks and waterfronts, replacing empty asphalt with shaded lawns and walking paths. Skeptics counter that the promised greenery functions as a landscaped buffer for a casino, not a park planned first for local needs. The state’s monitors will eventually judge whether alienation outcomes meet the statutory threshold in spirit as well as in letter. For a comparative lens on how other jurisdictions score “neighborhood fit,” see TEH’s look at a model that prioritizes responsible play and neighborhood fit across several regions.
Competition outside Queens has narrowed but not vanished. In the Bronx, Bally’s has pushed to convert the waterfront near its Ferry Point golf course into a casino campus, backed by an alienation bill similar to Queens’. On Long Island, Las Vegas Sands spent two years trying to cement a lease at the Nassau Hub before a court setback complicated its timeline. In Manhattan, developers have not given up; they continue to refine proposals that emphasize cultural programming, public safety enhancements, and housing. But the political math is brutal: community boards’ early thumbs-downs, combined with borough and state representatives wary of a Midtown casino, have left the borough’s bids threadbare as the deadline for final submissions arrives. For the full chronology of those defeats, revisit our explainer on how opposition coalesced in the Theater District and our subsequent wrap on why the last Manhattan pitches fell short.
The state process from here is scripted. Applicants whose advisory committees approved them must submit supplemental materials—including a proposed tax rate—by mid-October. The Gaming Facility Location Board has set a December 1 target to choose winners, followed by formal licensure by the Commission by year’s end. Those dates are ambitious; even on time, any new build will require years of construction and further city approvals, including environmental review and potential rezonings. The board’s message has been consistent, as outlined on the siting board’s own timeline: license fees and early tax receipts are already booked in financial plans, and delays ripple into transit budgets and capital programs.
Cohen’s team has tried to convert that urgency into momentum. The project’s labor agreements are advertised as comprehensive; public-benefit commitments include a dramatic expansion of local hiring pipelines, capital for workforce development, and underwriting for neighborhood organizations. Renderings—by firms with global credentials—emphasize permeability: plazas and passages that, the designers say, will feel like extensions of parkland rather than walled-off private space. Critics call this wishful marketing; casinos, they argue, are by nature inward-facing, engineered to keep people inside and spending money. That tension—between the resort logic of capture and the urbanist ideal of porosity—will be one of the most contested chapters when staff reports arrive.
The Queens vote also carries symbolic weight. For more than a decade, Willets Point has been a test of whether New York can do multi-phase, public–private redevelopment at scale without repeating the mistakes of urban renewal. The soccer stadium and housing are already changing the street grid and job base. Metropolitan Park would cement the area as a three-anchor district: sports, housing, and gaming. To supporters, that mix ensures year-round activity; to opponents, it risks making civic space contingent on a volatile industry whose booms and busts could leave the public holding the bag on infrastructure and services.
If there is a through line in the casino race, it is that proximity and predictability have beaten glamour. Existing gaming operators with strong labor ties have fared well; so have outer-borough plans able to marshal borough presidents, council members, and assembly delegations. Celebrity-backed bids in Manhattan grabbed headlines but struggled to assemble the quiet majorities required to survive Albany’s layered process. Cohen, a billionaire who has had to learn retail politics while owning a losing baseball team, has stitched together a coalition that now includes a decisive advisory vote and a State Capitol statute with his project’s geography built into it. For those who want primary documentation of that legal turn, read the enabling statute on discontinuing park use that undergirds the land plan.
None of this guarantees a license. The board will cut winners and losers in a single tranche, and every finalist will claim job creation, tax revenue, and public benefits in abundance. But the structural barriers that once made a resort beside the stadium seem implausible—the parkland law, doubts about borough support, the optics of a gambling floor a short walk from working-class blocks—have been whittled down. The question before the state is now more straightforward: in a race where two of three licenses are widely expected to go to existing operators, is Queens the best place for the last open seat?
For the communities around the ballpark, the stakes are immediate. A casino would bring new policing demands, pressures on small businesses, and late-night crowds spilling out after concerts and games. It would also bring unionized jobs—with wage floors that matter in neighborhoods where hospitality work often means precarious pay. The advisory vote suggests the panel saw enough in the benefits package to justify that trade. If you or someone you love is concerned about problem gambling, New York State provides 24/7 help via the state HOPEline with trained counselors offering confidential support.
What happens next is calendar math. Supplemental filings arrive in mid-October; the siting board aims to choose by December 1; the State Gaming Commission is scheduled to issue licenses by December 31. If Queens gets the nod, construction timelines point to late 2026 or 2027 openings at the earliest, with phases of the district potentially sequencing in ahead of full gaming floors. Between now and then, the ordinary work of city-building—traffic studies, environmental mitigations, contracting, oversight—will either vindicate the promise of Metropolitan Park or expose its soft spots. For continuing coverage, bookmark our casino desk’s live digest, where we’ll track filings, staff reports, and any late maneuvers from rival bidders.
