The Mets Imploded, But Steve Cohen Just Won Big

In the end, Queens sold out cheap. 

On Tuesday morning, a panel chaired by an Assemblymember whose campaign was aided by a donation from billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen (who is also associated with the largest insider trading fines handed out by the SEC ever), helped him clear a key hurdle in dropping a massive casino/parking complex in the middle of parkland in Queens.

In a hastily-assembled unanimous vote that took place in the atrium of the Queens Borough Hall, Assemblymember Larinda Hooks—who also sponsored the state bill that cleared the way to alienate the parkland—called roll shortly after 11 a.m. Tuesday for the Community Advisory Committee, whose role it is to approve or deny applications for one of the three downstate casino licenses to be given out by the state gaming commission by the end of this year. With the CAC's passage of Cohen's "Metropolitan Park" proposal, only four downstate casinos have made it to the final round, including two pre-existing "racinos" in Queens and Yonkers, and a rival bid from Bally's in the Bronx. Proposals for casinos in Manhattan and Brooklyn all went down in flames.