Photos: Mets’ Steve Cohen Unveils Renderings for $8B Citi Field Entertainment Complex

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen unveiled renderings on Tuesday for a proposed $8 billion casino, hotel and music venue that would sit next to Citi Field in Queens.

The project, in partnership with Hard Rock Entertainment, would supposedly offer “20 acres of green space, five acres of athletic fields and playgrounds and access to Flushing Bay and Flushing-Corona Park,” per Anna Young of the New York Post.

Because the land is currently zoned as park land, however, Cohen requires the support of lawmakers to use the area for a casino. He also needs Gov. Kathy Hochul to pass legislation that would allow for commercial development in that area and state gaming regulators to approve his project for one of three new casino licenses allowed in the downstate region under current New York law.

As Young noted, there is “stiff competition” for those licenses.

Per that report, “Developers and casino operators have joined forces with proposals to build a casino in Times Square, Hudson Yards, Coney Island and possibly Ferry Point in The Bronx, where gaming operator Bally’s replaced the Trump Organization as operator of the golf course.”

Among the proposed projects around the city competing with Cohen for a license are a $12 billion casino complex in Hudson Yards from Related Companies/Wynn Resorts; a $4 billion casino complex in Times Square from Caesars Entertainment, SL Green and Jay-Z Roc Nation; a West Side casino and hotel project from Silverstein Properties/Greenwood Gaming and Entertainment and a Fifth Avenue casino from Saks Fifth Avenue and Hudson’s Bay Company, among many other major proposals.

Cohen’s project is something of a long shot given the competition, but more importantly, due to the staunch opposition he faces from State Senator Jessica Ramos, who said in May she wouldn’t introduce legislation to move the project along:

“If a person doesn’t approve of gambling, you can’t convince them otherwise,” Alan Woinski, president of the casino consultant Gaming USA, told Michael Kaplan of the New York Post back in June. “I don’t see any way around [Ramos].”