Neil Barsky, Where’s the Best Place to Build a Casino in New York City?, The New York Times, December 29, 2022.
On the one hand New York City must close down the Rikers Island Jail complex by Aug, 31, 2027. On the other hand, it is now looking for a location to place a casino. Why not, Neil Barsky asks, put the casino on Rikers Island?
The city should build a large Las Vegas-style hotel and casino complex on Rikers after the jail complex is shut down.
Such a project would be a major attraction for the 23 million people living in the metropolitan area and the tens of millions more who visit the city each year. It would provide thousands of construction jobs for New Yorkers, and steady employment for thousands more. It would stem the flow of the billions of dollars that have been sucked out of the city and into casinos in nearby states over the past half century. And it would demonstrate that New York City can still get things done on a colossal scale.
But the real value of a Rikers casino goes way beyond dollars and cents. It should be structured so that the city’s ownership share must be earmarked from Day 1 for programs that are directly connected to incarceration and crime — fighting poverty, job training, drug rehabilitation, mental health services and public safety.
If the city can assure that its share of the profits is used to help its most needy citizens, a Rikers casino could become one of the most impactful public development projects in the city’s history.
At 413 acres, about two-thirds of a square mile, Rikers Island is nearly 15 times the size of Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side. That is more than enough space to build a casino, a convention space, a 3,000-room hotel, a concert venue and restaurants. A narrow bridge connects the island to Queens and would need to be expanded. Ferries from the Bronx could provide access from the north. Bus lines could be established from the south. Parking could be built on the island. It is an urban planner’s dream.
That sounds good to me.
With “a convention space, a 3,000-room hotel, a concert venue and restaurants” in addition to the casino it reminds me a bit about the World Island Project that Zeal Greenberg had proposed for Governors Island.
He proposed to transform Governors Island, a 172 acre former Coast Guard base in New York Harbor, into World Island, which he described as a “permanent world’s fair for a world that’s permanently fair”. Think of it as a combination of the best features of the United Nations, Disney World, a kid’s rumpus room, the trading floor at the Chicago Board of Trade, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the Japanese exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. (Wow!) It would cost $25 billion or so (Wow wow woW!) and be planted with orchids. (I’m likin’ this guy…) Why orchids? Beauty aside, they’re an early warning system for climate change, when the orchids go, we’re not going to be far behind. (…a lot!)
See you there on opening day.
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