New York casino licenses to be awarded in October

The state Gaming Facility Location Board said that it expects to announce next month who will win the high-stakes competition for four casino licenses in New York. The nine bidders for as many as two Hudson Valley/Catskills casinos made their pitches to a state panel yesterday, ending a two-day marathon of 16 bidders presenting their plans.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us, still," Law said at the conclusion of the presentations. "And we anticipate being able to make some decisions in the month of October, certainly after the public hearings. But we are not going to hold ourselves to any particular deadline, we want to make sure we get the decisions right, as opposed to quickly."

The presentations were extraordinary: an hour long each, with slideshows, videos, dozens of casino executives and scale models of the proposals.

And the price tags were large: A US$ 640 million, 446-room hotel and spa at the former Nevele resort in Ulster County; a US$ 1.5 billion facility with 1,000 hotel rooms about 40 miles from Manhattan in Tuxedo, Orange County, by gaming giant Genting.

Caesars is proposing a US$ 880 million resort near Woodbury Commons in Orange County.

Others offered similar promises of jobs, private investment and aid to local governments and the state. “The Catskills was once in its heyday the number one tourist destination in America,” Nevele CEO Angelique Brunner said. “After numerous attempts, the community is closer than ever to fulfilling its dream of rebuilding the tourism-based economy.”