US: Catskills casino sites will be chosen by fall

Casino applications should be submitted in March, and bids must be submitted by June. The man heading the commission that chooses the committee to make that historic decision is Mark Gearan, president of Hobart & William Smith Colleges, former Peace Corps director and deputy chief of staff and director of communications during the Clinton administration. Those were the highlights of the portion of Governor Andrew Cuomo's State of the State address devoted to casinos.

Once that selection committee is chosen — as early as this month — the state will, in March, issue requests for casino proposals, Cuomo said. The applications will be due in June, with the selections made by early fall, when construction could begin.

Four casinos in three upstate regions will be chosen. Those regions are: the Capital/Saratoga, the Southern Tier and the Hudson Valley/Catskills.  One region — assumed to be the Catskills — could get two casinos.

In the Catskills, there are now proposals for casinos at or near the old Concord site near Monticello, the former Grossinger's resort in Liberty, the Nevele resort outside Ellenville and on land in Rock Hill.

An executive with one of the leading contenders for a casino — the Empire Resorts/EPR Properties proposal at the Concord — applauded Cuomo's remarks. "After 30 years of talk and false starts, thanks to Gov. Cuomo we now have a clear path and timing for the creation of resort destination casinos in upstate New York," said Charlie Degliomini, executive vice president of Empire Resorts.