A rendering of what the potential Las Vegas Sands casino resort would look like at the Nassau Coliseum. // Photo courtesy of Las Vegas Sands
Las Vegas Sands has proposed a potential casino resort at the Nassau Coliseum. Previously the home arena of the New York Islanders, it now sits empty since the NHL team relocated.
“That site sits there and it loses money every day of the year,” said Ron Reese, senior vice president of Las Vegas Sands. “What we’ve proposed for the Coliseum is an integrated resort that would feature hotel rooms, restaurants, both fine dining and casual, bars and entertainment areas, a 5,000 feet live performance venue, a world class spa and a variety of other amenities.”
The resort would bring a significant amount of money to the area, increasing tax revenue for the surrounding communities of the Coliseum: Uniondale and Hempstead. This could be beneficial for the underfunded schools and public services in those areas.
“As a region, we need to explore new revenue generating ideas,” said John Durso, president of the Long Island Federation of Labor. “The state is handing us that opportunity. The Sands have committed to deliver quality jobs, tax revenue and a reason for young people to stay on Long Island. We must not miss this opportunity to deliver for our region.”
The resort will also pose as an opportunity for students in the surrounding area to be employed after graduation.
“You can start in the resort industry at an entry level and end up at the executive level years later because it isn’t just a job, it’s a career opportunity,” said David Paterson, former New York governor and a graduate of Hofstra Law School.
Additionally, Las Vegas Sands will be partnering with Nassau Community College to start a training program for students interested in working at the resort.
“The creation of a new industry with thousands of jobs in multiple sectors is a tremendous opportunity not only for our students but for the diverse populations we serve as a community college,” said Maria Conzatti, president of Nassau Community College. “Enhancing our curriculum with training programs, mentorship and internship opportunities in conjunction with an industry leader like Sands, provides an opportunity for adult students, career changers and all community members to be placed on successful career paths.”
Reese said that a similar project took place in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Bethlehem steel mill that provided jobs for the majority of residents closed down, causing their community to suffer. However, Las Vegas Sands built a resort casino in 2009 in place of the abandoned mill.
“It revitalized that area, and Mayor Callahan spoke to that. I think the people of Bethlehem would speak fairly strongly that it did not impact their quality of life in a way that was detrimental,” Reese said. “It brought jobs. It brought the opportunity for other people to be a part of it.”
Although a resort casino at the Nassau Coliseum may be financially beneficial for the community, Susan Poser, president of Hofstra University, has spoken outwardly against a casino within the vicinity of the university.
“Hofstra and the Hofstra board are against it,” Poser said. She wrote articles in Newsday and the Long Island Advocate stating her reasons for being against the casino. She said that after the publication, she received a lot of positive feedback from Hofstra alumni and the Hofstra board of trustees.
Poser raised concerns about the effects a casino could have on young people, the increased traffic and the potential for the casino to fail in coming years.
“There are so many students in the neighborhood,” Poser said. “That demonstrates a certain lack of care for the community.”
She is worried that students old enough to engage in gambling could develop addictions and antisocial behaviors such as crime and prostitution.
“That money is off the backs of people who oftentimes can’t afford to be gambling,” Poser said, saying that she fears a casino could create the possibility of students losing their financial aid money.
“If those are fears, [then the] university should be prepared to help students and not try to ban anything that has the potential for a negative,” said Zach Morris, a senior drama major. He emphasizes that if Hofstra is concerned about students’ vulnerability to addiction, they should invest more in their mental health and counseling services.
Although Poser expressed a number of concerns and stated that Hofstra is against a casino at the Nassau Coliseum, students do not seem to be concerned.
“I don’t think it necessarily reflects everyone’s feelings about it,” Morris said. “I’m not going to die going to the casino.”
“I don’t know any 21-year-old who would gamble all their money away,” said Julianna Kantor, a senior drama major.
Paterson said that some of the concerns about the mental and social effects of a casino come from outdated stereotypes propagated in the ‘50s and ‘60s that portray casinos as hubs for drugs, addictions and crime.
“All of that got changed in the early days by the Sands which was actually a convention company at the time, when they realized that they weren’t producing enough money to bring to conventions the services that they wanted, so they opened a casino company that inevitably became hotels,” Paterson said. “By doing that, they were able to make it family-friendly, there were things for all members of the family to do to the point that less than 40% of the people were going into the casinos, they were actually going to the other activities there.”
According to Reese, the casino would take up less than 10% of the proposed resort. However, Poser said that she thinks the property has the potential to grow as something that builds local businesses. The proposed resort casino will be high-end, and Poser believes that it would be more beneficial for the Coliseum to be turned into something that would serve the surrounding college population and low-income communities.
Paterson cited Jake’s 58, a resort casino and hotel in Islandia, as an example of how a casino may not negatively affect the community.
“They’ve been there for about seven or eight years now, and the police in Nassau and Suffolk have said that there’s been no increase in crime, no increase of this antisocial activity that was supposed to be happening and no incidents of addiction [correlated] to the placement of Jake’s.”
The proposed Las Vegas Sands resort casino still needs to be approved, but with many differing opinions about the potential positive and negative effects of having a casino at the Nassau Coli
seum, it remains unclear what the Coliseum will become.
