The Nassau County Legislature Rules Committee has voted to approve a 42-year lease on the Nassau Coliseum, and surrounding property known as the Hub, for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation.
It’s a follow-up from last week’s vote, when the Planning Commission voted unanimously to approve the lease, kicking it up to the Rules Committee.
Over 100 residents gave public comment at the meeting, including many from the Say No To The Casino Civic Association, which has repeatedly expressed concern over the long term implications of a Vegas-style Casino in Nassau County.
Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (D-Glen Cove), the lone dissenting vote when the Legislature voted 17-1 to approve plans for a casino last year, reminded those in attendance that this particular vote was not a referendum on the casino itself but rather a vote to ensure the Coliseum stays under lease, keeping those currently employed there working.
“An hour of research paired with some common sense is all you need to know, come to the correct correct conclusion about this project. You already know how bad it is bad for people, bad for families, bad for communities, bad for small businesses bad for our property values, and bad for our county economy,” Monica Kiely, Garden City resident, said. “Why is this debate always Las Vegas Sands or nothing? Why can our unions build the NYU Langone $3 billion hospital project on this site that will generate wonderful career jobs and plenty of opportunities for all different kinds of people? Tying up this property for 42 years means that you can’t put a good project there. And that’s what the operational lease is all about – 42 years of control. It’s not about saving Coliseum workers’ jobs. Right in the lease, it says they can close it down in two years.”
But those unions and employees mentioned are not in agreement with anti-casino advocates. With Sands as the only bidder right now, denying this lease puts up to 400 people out of work, according to them. The labor groups took particular aim at Hofstra University’s opposition to the casino.
“Hofstra University didn’t get the outcome they wanted with the Nassau County Legislature, so they litigating this,” Ryan Stanton, executive director of the Long Island Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said. “They took a scorched earth approach to jeopardize the economic certainty of the people behind me and the people that are at work today. That’s what today’s about. We have families that call Nassau County home that rely on this institution, not just to provide entertainment for you for me, which is important, but to provide food for their children to put a shirt on their kids back. We can’t lose sight because Hofstra University disagrees with the economic future of our region. Let the people decide. We have had a public process.”
Matthew Aracich, president of the Long Island Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, AFL-CIO, told the Press that the casino itself is a very small portion of Sands’s actual plan.
“This is not about a casino, this is about an integrated resort,” Aracich said. “The casino is about 10% of this whole project. The idea is that building this creates all that economic wealth, it gets people out of poverty, it gets them to go ahead and become middle class, it gets them to go ahead and ensure that all of the events that will happen will transpire from those people coming over to sands as well. So it’s it’s not just those 400 people, it’s expanding those 400 people.”
Aracich also blasted Hofstra for their opposition to the casino.
“They don’t want prospective parents coming in off the Meadowbrook Parkway, driving past a casino to get to Hofstra,” Aracich said. “They said it would be bad and people wouldn’t want to go ahead and have their children go there. My question right after that was, ‘Let me ask you this question: What happens if they come from the other side, which is through Hempstead?’ The answer I got was, ‘Oh, they don’t come that way.'”
Valerie Fitts, security manager at Nassau Coliseum and 53 year resident of Uniondale, came out to support the lease being approved – and had much to say on the issue of what a casino does to the area.
“This is about opportunity and employment in the near future of the community of that the National Veterans Memorial Coliseum sits there – we don’t want to see that building vacant,” Fitts told the Press. “Hofstra needs to cut it. What I do know is I live in Uniondale, and I am a block away from Hofstra. The parents of the students at Hofstra must only come to graduation, because we have had problems in our local neighborhoods with hostile students stopped and lawns, urinating on the lawns, doing other things on the lawns and other in the neighbors in the community.”
Hofstra University did not immediately return a request for comment.
The next vote on the matter will go before the full Legislature on Aug. 5.
Related Story: Battle Over Sands Casino Between Hofstra, Nassau County Continues
