Casino Licensing Process Progresses in NY: First Appointments Made to GFLB
The process of allocating licenses to three casinos in New York comes with progress as the State Gaming Commission made the first appointments to a Gaming Facility Location Board.
Quenia Abreu is the first one who joined a Board. She is a President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Women’s Chamber of Commerce, a not-for-profit membership organization dedicated to empowering and fostering the economic development of minorities and women through self-employment, microenterprise, and business ownership.
Another Board member introduced is Vicki Been, a Faculty Director of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, an Affiliated Professor of Public Policy of the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the Boxer Family Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.
The third initially appointed Board member is Senior Counsel to Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone Stuart Rabinowitz. He also served on the New York Gaming Facility Location Board in 2014/15.
Brian O’Dwyer, Commission Chair, commented that he sincerely appreciated those individuals’ desire to accept that task, which was truly a public service. According to O’Dwyer, the competitive process and the resulting projects can lead to the real transformation of communities through investment, capital, construction and direct employment, and tax revenues.
The Board’s responsibility will be to review and evaluate all casino applications and to finally choose three facilities to be licensed in the city. To assess a potential licensee’s suitability, the Board will determine the tax rate, license fee of no less than $500m, and minimum capital investment requirement.
However, before the Board can decide on the applications, they must prove they have acquired public support via approval of the applicable Community Advisory Committee as well as their compliance with all required local and state zoning requirements.
In other news, Sky River Casino has launched industry-leading cashless gaming options.
