Bronx and Queens Casino Bids Spark Clashing Testimony
With weeks left before local boards recommend gaming sites to the state, neighbors of Ferry Point Park and Citi Field lined up to make competing cases for construction jobs and against gambling.
This article originally appeared in The City.
By Haidee Chu and Jonathan Custodio
Bronx Voice
September 11, 2025
BRONX - Community members, business owners and union representatives exchanged heated arguments for and against two controversial casino projects at public hearings in Queens and The Bronx Tuesday evening — taking their last swings at influencing local community advisory committees that will decide in less than three weeks whether casino bids in their neighborhoods advance toward potential state approval.
At a nonprofit community center in Throggs Neck in The Bronx, 88 speakers signed up to share their thoughts about a $4 billion plan by Bally’s Corporation to build a casino complex at Ferry Point Park.
In Kew Gardens, about 200 people packed the atrium of Queens Borough Hall, where 87 people signed up to offer their testimony for Metropolitan Park, an $8 billion plan by billionaire Mets boss Steve Cohen and Hard Rock International to transform a 50-acre parking lot at Citi Field into a sprawling resort and gaming destination.
The two bids — both aimed at public park sites already approved by the state legislature at the behest of the developers — are among seven in New York City and one in Yonkers competing for three downstate casino licenses that the state Gaming Facility Location Board plans to issue by the end of the year.
The hearings were convened by six-member advisory committees for each prospective casino appointed by elected officials that will by the end of this month have to “issue a finding either establishing public support approving or disapproving the application,” according to the state gaming board, with a two-thirds vote needed for approval.
At both meetings, debate centered on whether the community benefits and economic opportunities outweigh the impact of possibly leaving neighboring communities vulnerable to gambling addictions. Opponents of both projects also disapproved of the use of land designated as public park space for the proposed casino complexes, while those who resisted Bally’s proposal also voiced concerns about the potential for increased traffic, crime and prostitution.
Public hearings in both boroughs were front-loaded with mostly supportive remarks, delivered by a number of small business owners, local groups and union members who showed up in droves and received thunderous cheers, with critics mostly stacked towards the end of the meetings.
In Queens, Annie Lo, an attorney with the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, argued that these “community benefits are rarely enforceable promises,” pointing to a broken agreement at Atlantic Yards for example.
“We've seen decades of casino and luxury hotel proposals, and we know the billionaire developer playbook,” Lo said, representing an organization that advocates for economic and housing justice for Asian Americans, who make up the majority of Citi Field’s neighboring area of Flushing. “We've been told that this casino will come with community benefits, but we know through experience that developer-promised benefits are a myth.”
Kenny Cohen, a member of Queens Community Board 8, struck back when his turn came more than an hour later, speaking in defense of the project.
“I don't know about the billionaire playbook that you all are familiar with, but the billionaire playbook that I know doesn't bring community to the table. They look for government subsidies so that they don't have to use their own money to build their projects. They don't pay union wages and give workers a fair share.”
He continued: “But now we have an opportunity to change what that billionaire playbook looks like. And that starts here in Queens, and it starts here with Metropolitan Park.”
The state gaming board requires each casino license applicant to commit in its proposals to spending at least $500 million on community benefits like transit upgrades, housing development and park renovations.
Bally’s has promised $625 million in local upgrades that include investments in schools, green spaces, infrastructure, a police substation and $75 million to fund additional MTA bus stops. Cohen’s Metropolitan Park has pledged $1.75 billion that include $480 million in MTA station upgrades at Willets Point and $320 million to construct, operate and maintain a 25-acre park for the fast-developing neighborhood, in compensation for its use of park land for the casino.
An opponent of the bid in the audience heckled supporters with the phrase “follow the money” throughout the night — alluding to the lobbying and community negotiations Cohen’s team has undertaken. Former Queens Community Board 5 member David Sands, representing electrical worker union Local Union 3 IBEW, rebutted: “We are going to follow the money — we're going to follow the money to good-paying jobs. We're going to follow the money — we're going to follow the money that supports small businesses that they are going to support and have selling food there.”
A similar debate unfolded around Bally’s in The Bronx, where the community advisory committee on Tuesday night held its last of two public hearings.
“They want gamblers. They do not want neighbors,” said Councilmember Kristy Marmorato, who has vehemently opposed the project. “If nobody’s gonna speak for The Bronx, just know that I’m gonna be the voice of this borough.”
Audience members repeatedly interrupted Marmorato with boos and applause, prompting Lisa Sorin, the advisory committee chair appointed by Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, to threaten to remove audience members.
“One thing abundantly clear, I am the City Council member in this district. When I go to community meetings, I know a majority of the faces,” continued Marmorato. “I do not know the majority of these people that are here that are for the project. They do not belong in this community. And let me tell you something else: Jobs are jobs. They will be here.”
In the face of Marmorato’s opposition, Mayor Eric Adams twice intervened in City Council deliberations to throw Bally’s a lifeline. In July, he vetoed the City Council’s decision to deny needed land use changes, and in June he lowered the vote threshold required to adopt a home-rule resolution, which cleared a path for state lawmakers to pass a bill to alienate parkland.
Assemblymember Amanda Septimo, whose district includes much of the South Bronx west of Ferry Point Park, also hopped on the mic to call for the audience to let Marmorato complete her testimony. Speaking after Marmorato, she endorsed the project.
“I know that you all get the same looks when you say you live in The Bronx, no matter where you live in The Bronx, you get those looks. No matter where you live in The Bronx, those realtors talk about your property values. And guess what? It's because of The Bronx,” Septimo said. “And if we're ever going to change that, then we have to take charge, and this is the opportunity to do that.”
She added: “This casino is going somewhere. This is our opportunity to seize this moment.”
A victory for Bally’s would also be an opportunity for President Donald Trump, who pardoned Adams earlier this year after he was indicted with federal charges of corruption and bribery.
If Bally’s were to win one of the three downstate casino licenses expected to be issued later this year, it would pour $115 million into the Trump Organization coffers as part of a 2023 deal Bally’s negotiated to purchase what had been Trump Links, the New York Post reported last year.
Local Promises
Both developers have made fervent efforts to garner local support.
Metropolitan Park, through its “commUNITY passport” program, promised to promote and cross-market local businesses in exchange for support of the proposed development. It also vowed to build out a pedestrian and bicycle bridge it called “Flushing Skypark” to connect downtown Flushing to neighborhoods west of the Flushing Creek when it needed State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), who represents neighboring Flushing, to deliver a parkland alienation bill after local State Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), then also running in the Democratic mayoral primary, refused to.
In the end, Cohen’s project secured support from all six Queens community boards surrounding Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Borough President Donavan Richards, as well as zoning and parkland alienation changes from the City Council and both chambers of the state legislature.
The Bally Foundation has also funded a free bus shuttle service between the golf course and Hutchinson River Parkway. And with the help of Attorney General Tish James, the foundation purchased Catholic all-girls Preston High School, which was headed for closure, for $8.5 million.
None of it stifled local pushback.
“Every day I gamble, but I will not attend the casino that is coming here because all it's going to bring is prostitution, drugs and problems,” said Laverne Francis, vice president of the NYCHA Throggs Neck Houses Tenants Association, at the hearing in The Bronx “Y’all better get ready to sell your houses because you're not going to be able to live in them comfortably.”
In Kew Gardens, more than half a dozen opponents fanned out before the camera line with protest signs. “WHY IS YOUR MONEY LOUDER THAN OUR VOICES,” one sign read. “NO MEANS CASINO,” another wrote.
One woman was nearly brought to tears when describing what it was like to have to stay up all night waiting for a loved one to come home from the casino having gambled away their retirement savings. Meanwhile, support from Anthony Sama, executive director of the Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which operates the park where the proposed site is located, split with the president of the park’s conservancy, Jean Silva, who opposed the casino on the basis that “parkland is for the people.”
“I see a lot of nice suits, I smell a lot of expensive cologne, I see millionaires who stand to make billions, and I see the rest of us here begging,” said Zeke Dunn, who described himself as an unaffiliated “community member who’s here to say what I see.”
He added: “I see workers who are begging these guys for a job, I see electeds who are begging these guys for revenue. I see community members who are begging these guys for a park and a pedestrian bridge we should have had already. This whole community input process has asked us as a community the question: ‘What should we beg the rich guys for?’ That's what this process has been. We don't need to beg rich guys for parks. This is backwards.”
Davon Lomax, political director of painters union DC9, was among the handful who took to the mic to defend the project: “We don't beg for jobs. We strap on our boots every day, and we go to work, and we fight for everything that we get. So we are fully supportive of this project.”
The night at Queens Borough Hall concluded with a tear-filled plea from a 16-year-old girl born and raised in Flushing.
“Adults like to say that young people will change the future, so please get off your phone, stop smirking, and listen to me. And I'm sorry if I'm crying, it’s because I'm frustrated and mad, and you laugh us all down,” said the girl, who did not share her name. “Gambling is an addiction. My home is not a destination for tourists to see a fleeting thrill while generations are ravaged right next door.”
At 7:02 p.m., just two minutes past the allotted hearing time, Metropolitan Park community advisory committee chair Assemblymember Larina Hooks (D-Queens) called an end to the meeting.
“There is no more time, and I am comfortable in saying there is no more time,” Hooks said, as a handful of people waiting to testify loudly objected.
She continued: “We must, as the collective here, as the committee, go with what our constituents are saying. And predominantly right now in this room today, there were more yays than nays, but we let everyone speak.”
About a dozen people who had patiently waited for three hours that evening never got to testify.
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