Casino developers target site in Blooming Grove By Chris McKenna Times Herald-Record Two major companies hunting for places in Orange County on which to propose a casino resort have joined forces and made an initial pitch to municipal officials for a 124-acre site on Route 208 in the Village of South Blooming Grove, not far from Exit 130 on Route 17. Representatives of The Cordish Company and Penn National Gaming met this week with Blooming Grove Town Board members and South Blooming Grove officials to discuss a possible casino project at what is now Cassidys Driving Range and a 40-acre, undeveloped tract beside it. Officials say they were told the project would cost about $750 million and would include a hotel and casino, but had no further details about the plans. The overture comes as developers and gaming companies are racing to secure properties and court local support for a competition now under way for four casino licenses that New York will award this year in three upstate regions. One or two sites will be chosen in the Hudson Valley and Catskills, a region that includes Orange, Ulster and Sullivan counties. Under the gun to submit a $1 million application fee by April 23, prospective developers cant proceed without statements of support from the host municipalities. And the big lure for the communities theyre courting is the promise of shared casino revenue — an estimated $6.9 million a year per host in this region — and a deluge of property taxes. South Blooming Grove Mayor Robert Jeroloman said Friday that the developers estimate their casino resort would be assessed at around $450 million, or more than nine times the entire tax base of the village of roughly 3,200 people. “These are numbers that are hard to get my arms around,” he said. Both he and Blooming Grove Supervisor Robert Fromaget expressed support on Friday for the concept Cordish and Penn National have presented so far. Fromaget said he hoped to schedule a joint work session of the town and village boards in a school auditorium next week, so that residents can hear the companies describe their plans. He expects each board to vote separately afterward on resolutions of support. The resolutions would clear a preliminary hurdle for developers, who would still need to win a casino license and then slog through the approval process before local boards, including an environmental review. One Blooming Grove councilman voiced initial objections to the casino plan, and to the back-to-back, private meetings board members held with the developers on Thursday to avoid triggering Open Meetings Law requirements. “I did not move to the Town of Blooming Grove because I wanted to live in a town with high-density housing or a casino,” Councilman Brandon Nielsen said, adding that only an outpouring of casino support by residents would induce him to support the project. Fromaget said he arranged two meetings with no quorum present because he wanted board members to get an initial understanding before the plans were made public. “We did it that way because we have to be informed in order to represent the people,” he said. Before teaming up, both Cordish, which is based in Baltimore, and Penn National of Wyomissing, Pa., had earlier looked in Woodbury for a potential resort site. Cordish had even zeroed in on property beside the Harriman Metro-North station before a rival developer — Rochester-based Flaum Management — secured an option to buy the 129-acre site and rolled out its own casino plans. cmckenna@th-record
Posted on: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 22:09:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015