I’ve been trying to ignore this one all day (because see below), but it’s on the front page of the New York Post staring up at me from newsstands, so fine, okay then: The owners of the New York Mets proposed building a casino in the Citi Field parking lot as part of the shopping-mall development they and developer Related Cos. want to build there. The casino would be run by Long Island’s Shinnecock Indian Nation.
“Would be” because the Mets owners proposed this way back in 2011, and it was rejected by the city as too difficult to get approvals for. Casino gambling being illegal in New York state, you see, other than on tribal lands, which the onetime Corona Ash Dump certainly is not.
There is a bill in the state legislature that would legalize gambling in New York, so it’s always conceivable that this casino plan could end up being revived. Even then, though, it’s hardly big news, since the idea of a casino on the site was already reported last summer. There are plenty of interesting questions about the Related/Mets development plan — my City Limits colleague Pat Arden raises a bunch of them in his in-depth article today — but “Mets Are Proposing To Build A Casino (Two Years Ago, And Not Anymore)” isn’t really front-page material. Though I suppose any opportunity to show Mr. Met in a green visor playing craps (do people wear visors for craps? isn’t that just poker?) with giant novelty dice is one not to be passed up.