Gambling companies and real-estate developers submitted a total of 17 bids yesterday in the competition to win a casino licence in upstate New York.
Proposals for projects covered locations stretching from Tyre, near Lake Ontario, to Tuxedo, in Orange County. Some of the biggest names in the business sketched out their plans, including Malaysian casino firm Genting Group and Caesars Entertainment.
A total of 22 application fees were submitted in April, with some groups paying fees for more than one project. Five proposals were abandoned. The companies are competing for four casino licences in three regions: the Catskills and the Hudson Valley; an area around Albany; and a strip that runs from Binghamton north-west to Lake Ontario. The state has placed a limit of two casinos for each region.
Perhaps the biggest surprise yesterday came when Empire Resorts, which owns the Monticello Casino and Raceway, and real-estate investment trust EPR Properties submitted a joint $1bn bid for a casino in the town of Thompson at the site of the old Concord Hotel resort in the Catskills.
The team had previously said it planned a project in the $750m range. "I think they are trying to create a proposal that is too good to be true," said Chad Beynon, an analyst who covers the casino industry with Macquarie Capital, a private-investment firm. "That billion-dollar bid seems a little high for what I would have thought, particularly for that location."
