So apparently New York Mets owner Steve Cohen has some plans afoot for his stadium parking lots:
On Jan. 7 at 2 pm, Steve Cohen invites all New Yorkers to a community visioning session at Citi Field to discuss the future of the 50 acres of asphalt around the stadium.
You can RSVP at the link below. https://t.co/qMk337896E
— Mike Mayer (@mikemayer22) January 4, 2023
To clarify a bunch of questions you may have:
- No, that’s not the site of the old auto shops where the new NYC F.C. stadium is supposed to go; according to the not-at-all-self-importantly-titled queensfuture.com, it’s just the existing Mets parking lots, which the site calls “vacant asphalt and wasted opportunity.”
- Cohen wants to “create a shared space that people not only want to come to and enjoy, but can be proud of,” according to the website.
- Yes, there’s been talk that this might have to do with Cohen seeking one of New York City’s new casino licenses.
- No, a casino probably wouldn’t pass muster as an acceptable use of city parkland, which the parking lots are still zoned as, something that deep-sixed a previous plan to build a mall on them.
So what, exactly, is Cohen up to here? Given all the PR glurge on his site about wasted opportunities, any presentation on Saturday is likely to be a bunch of public kvetching about how his team shouldn’t be forced to remain surrounded by a sea of asphalt when it could be surrounded by shiny new somethings that Queens can be proud of, and incidentally he can make a ton of money off of, all without paying property tax on the land under them since it’s owned by the city. Whether that will be enough to convince the city council or the courts that a private casino counts as a public purpose related to athletics, who can say. I mean, you can bet on games at casinos, right? Which raises the question: Did Cohen’s lawyers try arguing that a mall would be related to Mets games because you can buy Mets gear there, not to mention beer to drown your sorrows in when the Mets lose?
Will report back more on Monday on how this “visioning session” goes, but judging from the Twitter replies, it’s going to be a lot of people saying “Sign Carlos Correa already, and don’t fuck with my parking.”
P.S. I didn’t even notice on first glance that the heading on Cohen’s new website is “A New Day in Queens.” Nice callback, I guess?
So, as one of the few billionaires who was actually convicted of getting to be a billionaire (at least in part) through criminal means (as I recall, insider trading related to his hedge fund…) rather than doing the more fashionable thing and offering to pay several hundred million plus the cost of the investigation to “wrap things up” with no admission of guilt as several of his fellow billionaires have done, would Steve the Skeev actually be able to GET a casino license in NY?
I mean, I know, and I was choking back laughter as I wrote that… but shouldn’t there, you know, be some sort of actual test in the arsenal of bureaucratic hurdles the gaming commission has to weed out, say, convicted felons?
Either way, it seems likely that part of the publicly funded project he envisions will be for taxpayers who paid for the stadium and the parking lots to pay for parking garages (all revenue to the Mets, natch) to help the team offset the loss of the parking spaces that the team’s owner is going to demand be eliminated so he can build a casino on public land (and probably also with public money).
It takes courage to be a forward thinking billionaire in this economy, man.