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Thursday, October 28th 2010, 4:00 AM
The Aqueduct racino has long been touted as a project that would hire local minority- and female-owned businesses, but its first such hire is a company from New Jersey.
The Genting organization - the developer behind the casino at the Queens race track - disclosed the hiring as it prepared for a groundbreaking ceremony set for Thursday.
Under its deal with the state, Genting agreed that its contractors must strive to spend 25% of their $350 million budget on subcontractors owned by women and minorities.
That same deal requires that about 25% of the 1,300 construction workers expected to be hired should be minorities or women.
The deal doesn't specify that they be local. But during the politically charged process of picking the casino's operator, local pols and community leaders repeatedly insisted that southeast Queens residents and businesses get a piece of the pie.
At meetings and in communications with state officials, they pointed out that the neighborhood that surrounds Aqueduct is plagued by some of the worst unemployment in New York.
Some, such as James Heyliger, president of the Association of Minority Enterprises of New York, even suggested 25% was "insufficient to make a difference" in a community with an 18% unemployment rate.
Asked about minority- and women-business hiring, Genting spokesman Stefan Friedman said the project's general contractor, Tutor Perini, is perusing a list of 400 qualified contractors supplied by the state.
However, as of Wednesday, Tutor Perini had hired only a single female-owned subcontractor, the electrical supply firm Turtle & Hughes - of Linden, N.J.
Under the terms of the $3.5 million contract, the company will provide four transformers and four electric circuit breaker boxes as big as a one-car garage, said Turtle & Hughes Vice President Luis Valls.
With Gov. Paterson and a gaggle of pols expected at today's ceremony, Friedman said Genting plans to install its first 1,600 video lottery terminals by the end of March.
When the casino - the first in the city - is fully operational in about 18 months, it's expected to generate $1 million a day for the state Lottery Division.
Genting has wired the state a $380 million upfront franchise fee and paid the New York Racing Association a $25 million advance on its share of the profits.
Last week, Paterson and Senate Democratic leaders Malcolm Smith (D-Queens) and John Sampson (D-Brooklyn) were slammed in an inspector general report for the way they injected politics into the selection of the casino operator.
The report was referred to federal prosecutors for possible criminal charges.
Smith and Sampson are not expected to appear at the ceremony today.
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