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webkey New York State(Photo: Chris Cusumano / Poughkeepsie Journal)

ALBANY – State law allows a siting board to select up to four casinos proposals for licenses in New York. And the "up to" part will be closely watched as the board expects to make its selections next month.

Kevin Law, the head of the state Gaming Facility Location Board, said there's no guarantee that the panel will recommend four casinos for three regions of the state. He said they could decide to simply do one for each region.

"It says up to four. So the decision could be made to do less than four," Law told Gannett's Albany Bureau in Albany on Tuesday.

How many casinos will be built and where will get a public airing starting Monday in Albany, followed by public hearings on Tuesday in Poughkeepsie and Wednesday in Ithaca.

Sixteen casino projects are vying for up to four licenses in three regions of the state: the Catskills/Hudson Valley area, the Albany area and the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes.

The three public hearings will be the public's only chance to speak in favor or against the projects in their regions before the location board.

Law, who heads the Long Island Association, a business group, said the board is on target to make its selections in October. Then the state Gaming Commission would review the recommendations and issue the final licenses -- perhaps by year's end.

The location board will collect public input on the 16 proposals: three in the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes; four in the Capital region; and nine in the Catskills/Hudson Valley.

The marathon sessions will run for 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Already, the first 25 minutes to start each hour of testimony are booked in five-minutes slots.

The rest of the speaking slots will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, the board said. Each person gets up to five minutes to speak; written materials can also be submitted.

The casino applicants are required to attend the public hearings in their regions, but are not expected to make comments or take questions from the public, the location board said in a six-page list of rules for the sessions.

"Individuals attending the public comment event cannot pose comments or questions directly to the applicants in attendance," the rules state.

Robert Williams, the executive director of the Gaming Commission, said the process has been smooth and on schedule. The location board reports to the Gaming Commission, who will be the final arbiter on who gets the licenses.

"It's gone about as smooth as we could have hoped for," Williams said. "We are still maintaining all of our deadlines that we had initially set and have no reason to believe that we won't maintain that schedule."

Still, there remains plenty of uncertainty over who will win the casino licenses.

It's a high-stakes battle among some of the biggest names in the gaming industry, including Caesars, Genting, Mohegan Sun and Hard Rock.

Six of the nine proposals in the Catskills/Hudson Valley region are for Orange County – the closest spot to the 20 million people who live in the New York metropolitan area.

Because of the size of the region, the odds have been in favor of it getting two of the four licenses – with one each then going to the Albany area and the Southern Tier/Finger Lakes areas.

But Law and Williams said the state may elect to simply go with one in each of the regions, or put two in either the Albany area or Southern Tier/Finger Lakes.

"It's really up to the Gaming Facility Location Board to make a determination as to where the greatest impacts of these locations would be," Williams said.

The largest projects – including a sprawling $1.5 billion casino resort by Genting in Tuxedo – are being pitched for Orange County.

Orange County is better economically than parts of the Catskills and Ulster County, where there's one casino plan. The goal of the law, approved by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature, is to put casinos where they would provide the greatest economic impact in a distressed region.

So while casinos in Orange County may make the most money, that's not the sole intent of the measure, Law said.

Law said the objective is to balance between the needs of each region and the casinos that can be most profitable.

He also noted that New York has to mindful of growing casino competition in other states, pointing out there may one day be casinos in northern New Jersey – just across the border from Orange County.

"It's really going to make our jobs very challenging. We want to do something good for communities that are starving for this type of investment. We'd love to do something to promote tourism upstate," Law said. "But you have to also take into consideration what's happening around us in the gaming industry."

Some state lawmakers are pressing the location board to not allow casinos in Orange County, saying it would hurt the economically depressed Catskills – which has wanted casinos for 40 years to make up for a decline in its resort business.

The two casino bidders in Sullivan County said they would be hard pressed to move forward with their plans if Orange County gets a casino.

"If we wanted to just make money, I can guarantee you if we put a casino in 42nd Street and 7th Avenue in New York City, it would be the most lucrative casino in the entire world," Assembly Racing Committee chairman Gary Pretlow, D-Mount Vernon, said on a radio show last week.

He continued: "It would put everyone else out of business, okay. But that's not what we are trying to do."

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Public meetings

Three hearings will be held starting Monday to allow the public to weigh in on the casino proposals. They will be held from 8 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Monday in Albany:

Holiday Inn Turf

205 Wolf Road

Albany, New York 12205

Tuesday in Poughkeepsie:

The Grandview

176 Rinaldi Boulevard

Poughkeepsie, New York 12601

Wednesday in Ithaca:

Hotel Ithaca

222 South Cayuga Street

Ithaca, New York 14850

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